Get your boots on

Christmas journey

2010-12-22T14:41:00.000Z

Okay, so the journey I'm making today may not be a new one, but it is still venturing from home. At least now that the concept of home has swung round to being Sheffield rather than Lowestoft, today's destination.

I was at the train station pretty early, even for me. Because of the weather the buses have been a bit erratic, so I thought I'd better off trying to get out early. I was cursing having such an early train, if I'd been early for a train later in the day, I'd have simply made for the Sheffield Tap and had a half of ale.

After a fairly chilly hour on platform 5, watching the comings and goings of the station it was time for the train to arrive. In the last 5 minutes the expected time displayed on the board kept flip flopping backward and forward. In the end it was only a minute or two delayed, which is easily made up on the journey.

And what a journey. Travelling by train in the aftermath of the recent cold snap is a wonderful thing. Provided the trains are running on your chosen route of course. The landscape streaming past was beautiful and White, with bold and stark skeletal trees dotted around the fields. Slowing through stations brought massive icicles hanging down from bridges and arches into focus.

Some small flurries of snow started whilst we were waiting for signals to change and let us into Peterborough. A few miles outside Peterborough though, we got stuck behind a queue of trains backed up by a broken down train at it's head. The faces of people when we started up again lit up only to become downcast again when we slowed and stopped briefly. The conductor announced that the train ahead had been moved but that we were likely to be stopping and starting because of the queue of trains ahead. Not a problem for me really, as I have all day and this is minor compared to rail chaos I have endured in the past. Maybe a little more worrying for those having to change at Ely for Stansted and flights onward.

As it happens it seems the times of the train to Lowestoft have been altered by a few minutes, allowing me to walk straight off one train and on to the next with exactly a minute to spare. So the delays did me a favour in preventing me having to stand on a chilly Norwich station for ages. Bonus.

Unfortunately their was only a light dusting of snow between Norwich and Lowestoft, making the journey not quite as pretty as it otherwise may have been. No amount of snow could ever make the giant sugar beet processing plant at Cantley pretty, however. Or not stinky for that matter!

Folly Beach

2010-07-31T07:39:00.003Z

After leaving Savannah we went directly to Charleston, South Carolina -or rather to Folly Beach at the seaside. We'd pre-booked an apartment that was back away from the beach just over the bridge to it. We were all very pleasantly surprised by the apartment which was really quite nice, although to avoid any strops Gemma and I plumped for the small twin room. This still had an en-suite, so wasn't too bad but was missing the hot tub and giant bed of the master room. The complex was called Marsh Winds which was appropriate as there was a bit of a funky smell coming from the mud-flats out the back. This was OK though - it was nice to have a bit of nature so close by and from the balcony we could hear snapping noises that I guessed were crabs.

Following Jo's pre-occupation with breakfast we went back up the road to a Piggly Wiggly supermarket for supplies before heading into Folly Beach on foot to look for Ste and Flude and Willow's place. We found them in a really smart house set back from the beach and spent the evening doing a bit of a meet and greet with their family and friends.

The following day we attempted Charleston, but I think all felt a little fatigued from stomping round Savannah, so couldn't cope with it. We lasted an hour or so before heading back into Folly Beach and out onto the beach for a swim. The ocean was pretty powerful. After swimming I got a little bored sitting on the beach but it was clear that Jen had been wanting just that -it wasn't even really sunny at this point with clouds welling up so I went for a walk with Gemma. When we met up with the guys later Andy had lost his ring which had been in my shoe. I felt pretty guilty since I'd picked the shoe up, but they managed to get back to the beach and found it. Tea that night was a giant pizza from Bert's market along with Pasta and weird garlic bread. It was quite nice just sitting in watching TV and cooking for a change.

On the morning of Flude & Willow's wedding Gemma & I decided we were going to get dropped off at the lighthouse by Andy and Jo who were heading back into Charleston to shop (urgh). Daz and Jen joined us and we had a leisurely stroll back along the beach towards the centre of Folly Beach, taking photos and marvelling at some of the houses. Along the way we saw fenced off areas for turtle nests and whilst taking a photo of a dead fish a couple informed Daz that there was a tiny turtle next to him. The couple took the turtle back out into the ocean and released it.

I had a swim in the apartment complexes pool with Daz while the girls started their pre-wedding preening. Jen convinced Gemma to wear a floaty dress that I had advised against because of the wind on the beach, Jen herself had managed to get sunburn and had to force swollen legs into silly strappy shoes. We picked up Ste (best man) and Flude (groom) a little late because of a snafu over where they were and Folly Beach's one way system. Getting into the car Ste informed Daz and I that we were the photographers for the day -luckily for gear carrying reasons we'd sorted out a mix of lenses between us earlier. Andy had left his camera at the apartment because he didn't think he'd need it!

The wedding was right on the beach up an aisle made of shells and was fairly disorganised but also really sweet and charming. Somehow I managed to shoot some fairly decent pictures, and I'm sure Daz's will be good although I haven't yet seen them. Apparently the vows were quite lovely although I couldn't catch them as I was stood right at the back with the 70-300mm lens and the click of the shutter constantly going. After the ceremony we had more photo opportunities and got Flude and Willo to ourselves after the rest of the guests drifted off - with Ste picking up his camera and doing what he does best. He really has an uncanny ability for people shots, I guess because he is a people person. I'm more focused on dead stuff, possibly because I am dead inside?

Adding Emily meant the car was full on the way to the reception which meant I had a lovely ride in the boot. No air-con in the boot and the car having been super-heated by the beating sun and slamming around every time Andy swung the wheel. Lovely. The reception was at Bowens Island, down a track and in this crazy wooden shack thing on a jetty over the river. The shack was covered in scrawlings and later Flude produced sharpies for the guests. The DJ was ace, possibly the best wedding DJ set I've ever seen. We all hung out on the jetty watching Dolphins skip in the river as the light faded.

Back in the shack it was time for food (a lovely spicy sausage and shrimp and potato combo) and the speeches. Ste was petrified, but did really well. Pretty much everyone at the top table did a speech, alternating between funny and moving and there were quite a few sobs during them. I took up photography duties again for the first dance, grabbing Ste's camera to start as I had the wrong lens on. That out of the way I started to relax and went into random snapping mode for the rest of the night. The beer flowed, people danced and at some point we ended up in a taxi home.

We were surprisingly un-hungover after the wedding. Gemma, Andy and Jo and I made for Folly Beach for lunch. For some reason my omellete and chips came with fruit on the plate. Just another example of the oddities of food in the US. We walked on the fishing pier, watching people pull tiny sharks out of the water. We ended up on the beach with Ste and the rest of the gang. The currents on that side of the beach were nuts and I decided to get out of the water after nearly being swept out to sea by the undertow of a massive wave breaking over my head.

Savannah

2010-07-21T18:37:00.000Z

We found a motel we'd earmarked on the edge of Savannah's central district pretty easily - it was reasonable for being so central, I think we got coupon book discount. From the outside it looked a bit scruffy but the rooms were quite nicely done out inside although pretty dingy from lack of sunlight getting in. The others all piled straight out but I wanted a coffee and a shower to wake myself up so Gem and I said we'd meet them later. Later wasn't very much later and surprise, surprise it was in the pub - a brew pub at that. I availed myself of their fantastic, and 7%, IPA, a hoppy floral delight.

After finishing our beers we went up the main touristy market area and found Vincent Van Go-Go where we had absolutely cracking pizza washed down with pitchers of beer from the brewpub round the corner. We had another drink in Savannah's best English pub (2007), which wasn't that great and then back to the brew pub. There was a mix in what to do next, with me wanting to go back. For me it was decided when a drunk Gemma took a throwaway comment too seriously and blew up to what could be a full blown row. Instead of arguing it in the street whilst drunk I just left them to it and went back to the motel.

So the atmosphere was a bit strained the following day between Gemma and I, but as is normal we soon sorted it out. We went off into Savannah by ourselves, early, to try and get walked around the town before it got really hot. Savannah is noted as being an exceptional walking town, a rarity in the states, as it is fairly compact, has loads of small parks dotted around and lots of historic buildings (although my house would class as historic by US standards). We started out by the river, where I indulged my pastime of reading information boards, after which we walked up into the town and took a winding route through the blocks looking at churches and graveyards. We were back at the motel for a rest by about 09:30.

After our rest we plotted a route to a market to try and get ingredients for a picnic in a large park at the top of the town. Unfortunately the market would only really see us for a picnic of melon and lettuce, so we just went to the park empty handed hoping to find somewhere to eat. We didn't manage it and with the sun reaching insanity levels we made back towards town. On the way we found the Mellow Mushroom, another pizza place, but we grabbed hoagies instead - somewhat massive sandwiches that Gemma had a right job eating. I noted with interest the $2 draft beer happy hour that would be on later.

We got back to the motel just in time to avoid a mad rainstorm, with the weather channel on TV sounding a siren and flashing up an alert. We watched it supping a coffee from the safety of our motel balcony - people hurrying through the streets with the big cars throwing up massive plumes of water as they drove through it. Some time after it subsided we got a call saying they were outside a bar in the tourist street so we went out to meet them. They were full of tales of being caught in the downpour and taken in by a Baptist Church to shelter. Daz and Jen went back and the rest of us went to the sweet shop. They were like, well, kids in a sweet shop. Gemma fortunately managed to restrain herself - she had a strange glint in her eyes for a while. Andy and Jo also went back to change so Gemma and I headed off back up to Mellow Mushroom for happy hour, getting caught in a much smaller downpour on the way. We were a bit soggy when we reached the bar and happy of some $2 beers. Daz and Jen had gone to eat somewhere a bit fancier so we were joined later on by Jo and Andy. We chatted outside to some locals who were pretty cool and provided us with some laughs.

Meeting Daz and Jen we ended up in a rock bar of some sort playing table-top Ms. Pac Man (badly). It all goes a little hazy after that.

Jekyll Island

2010-07-21T18:23:00.002Z

I'd heard that the Georgia Islands were beautiful so I suggested that we stop in somewhere rather than drive straight to Savannah. We had a bit of a wait about in the morning as we had to wait for Radio Shack to open so Daz could buy a replacement camera charger for the one he'd lost a few nights previously.

We were quite quickly at Jekyll Island and made a little circuit of one side before finding a tourist info. Gemma and Jo came back to the car very excited that they'd found leaflets for a turtle sanctuary so we headed for that. Daz and Jen didn't seem keen so I was surprised that they stumped up the $6 entry fee. They only spent about 5 minutes in there. I quite enjoyed it, although the exhibits were firmly aimed at younger people it was quite engaging and the hospital section was interesting to see the range of problems that they deal with.

Following a 'meal' of leftover pork in the weirdest baguette I've ever tasted we continued on round the island in the car until we reached the fishing pier and driftwood beach. The latter was cool, although mis-named, it looked to me like the dead wood had formerly been part of the forest which had been claimed by the sea and the beach. Still lots to look at - what we think were snake skeletons, horseshoe crab shells and weird gnarly dried up tree parts sticking from the sand. I really enjoyed the walk down the beach and tried to walk back through a spooky looking forest all overbearing with the tree branches strewn with Spanish Moss. Daz came with me but between me blundering into the webs of massive spiders and Daz being attacked by biting bugs we abandoned it and got back onto the beach.

Okefenokee

2010-07-19T18:59:00.001Z

In retaliation for making stops at beaches Andy insisted on starting the day at Tallahassee Automobile Museum. Gem and I didn't fancy it so waited outside watching people setup the grounds for a large political rally. We got off onto the highway again with a fairly long drive ahead of us into Georgia. We took a quick rest stop in Lake City a small town distinguished by it's having a lake in the middle of it.

We hadn't exactly decided where to stay and their was division of opinion on whether to go for a log cabin near the East entrance to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness Area. We weren't able to rustle up the owners of the cabins at all either on the phone or physically there, when we drove past, so the issue was decided for us.

Instead we ended up booking in to a pretty new looking motel outside of Kingsland. We paid 5 bucks extra to get suites, which was more than worth it as we had room to spread out. More so after we did some washing. I think every possible surface in our room was covered in drying pants. The pool in the motel was quite nice although I am not so sure about the extremely hot hot tub next to it.

We were up and off early back down the road to Okefenokee the next morning. We decided to do a guided boat tour first so we would learn a bit about the place and the wildlife. Thoroughly worth the money, we had about an hour and a half trip through various of the Okefenokee habitats, commentary on what we were seeing and ample opportunity for photography. I reluctantly gave my camera with the 70-300 lens on it to Gemma and used the kit lens on her D40 for a good portion of the trip. I think she got the best alligator shots too. Typical.

We smarted down a lunch of crappy Walmart sarnies before jumping in the car and heading off to check out some of the walks. There is a preserved homestead from the family who held out against selling up to the federal government that we went to first. The homestead itself was pretty interesting with lots of insights into what it must have been like to live in those parts before modernisation and roads. In a word, tough, but they had some fairly ingenious touches to make stuff easier. The volunteer guide there was a proper character and we'd had a bit of a banjo recital out of him by the end of it.

Back on into the nature we took a boardwalk. I rather stomped off ahead with Andy as the rest of the bunch were like a horde of elephants tromping along, not so conducive to seeing wildlife. Big spiders, lizards, dragonflies and another alligator all obliged by staying still enough for me to pop some shots off. At the end of the boardwalk was a raised viewing platform that offered a great view out over the swamp. Unfortunately the birds weren't as lens-friendly as the other critters and stayed over the other side of the water. I did spot egrets and ibis, but they were too far away to even bother trying to photograph.

The heat was getting to everyone a bit so we were glad to get back in the car for the air-con. Back at the visitors centre we hired kayaks for the afternoon and laden down with water bottles headed back out onto the canal. As Jo had never canoes or kayaked before I decided I would jump in with her and Gemma would go with Andy. Jo was a bit worried about being able to paddle properly but I went through the basics with her and we were soon motoring along. We were a bit confused by the instructions left to us by the hire people conflicting with the signage so missed the spot we were to turn off the canal into the canoe only natural channel. Even out on the canal the going was quite tough in the heat and I made an executive decision that we wouldn't take the long route. We managed to find the section that they had recommended to use and went down it the wrong way. The water levels in this section, which narrowed massively were quite low and I kept getting pulling bits of mud and weed up and depositing them on myself. I'd worn a white top too - not good. In trying to clear the paddle I managed to pass right by a big turtle out on a bank that Gemma and Andy got right up close to. We took the channel back to the canal that we had originally missed and the paddling immediately got better and invigorated us somewhat. The alligators still made regular appearances prompting me to stop the kayak and shout their direction out. I think Jo was getting a bit like, "okay, whatever, alligator", by that point but not me. I always feel insanely blessed by close encounters with wildlife like that. Being at eye-level to the alligators has only increased my desire to do a big canoeing trek, especially if setup with dry-bags for cameras.

Back on dry land I changed into the dry clothes that I had sensibly brought with me, although no-one else was as filthy and wet as me. I also e away with a bit of a catalogue of injuries; a big bit of skin ripped from near my thumb and the beginnings of a horrendous bruise on my back.

All feeling happily tired and with various sun, paddling and insect wounds, we limped back to Kingsland and got ourselves cleaned up before going for food. Our choice ended up being Sonny's BBQ Pit, where we ate a phenomenally large amount of meat between us. I could have probably done without sides - although my baked sweet potato was nice, the beans were far too sweet. We all almost fell over laughing when the waitress asked if we wanted dessert.

Pensacola to...Tallahassee

2010-07-19T17:09:00.000Z

We left Pensacola without a firm destination in mind but knowing that we would take the coast road rather than the main interstate with the idea of stopping off along the way. Pensacola beach was the first place we drove through and Jen's shout of, "should we stop here", was immediately shot down by everyone else in the car. The place was ram packed with cars and people and charmless hotels, I for one was looking for more out of the way things.

Our first stop was someway along the road where we jumped out at a beach of beautiful white sand and had a quick walk. There were only a few other people around and some parked up diggers which I assume were part of the oil clean-up effort. We didn't stay long there, just enough time to marvel how hot it had become. There were people just sat around on chairs - there is no way I could manage that in that heat (I recall Andy saying the car was clocking it at 36c).

Somewhere further down the coast we stopped for lunch at a small town of which the name escapes me before continuing to Grayton Beach state park. Again it was beautiful white sand, this time with quite a few people. Everyone barring me and Andy rushed into the sea where in the shallows was a massive school of bait fish. Andy's strange aversion to sand kicked in even quicker than usual and he left for a fag. When we re-grouped we took a forest trail to try and see some wildlife. There were plenty of insects, a lizard or two and Andy and I saw a brilliant red Cardinal and what we think was a Blue Jay. It was this kind of walk that I had been waiting for, the natural world being my favourite thing about the US.

Not knowing where we were headed, we hadn't sorted out a place to stay so tried at a couple of the coastal towns along the way. It being a weekend we weren't able to find any with vacancies except one which looked a bit shady. We took the decision to drive inland a bit pointing toward Tallahassee and to look for motels along the way. This took us up a very straight and boring road through Apalachicola National Forest as the light slipped away.

It had been dark for some time when we got to Tallahassee and started pulling into malls off the highway. Several had no vacancies but we managed to find a cheapish one that did and booked into that. Sitting outside our rooms having a beer we got chatting to a Mexican roofer who tried to explain his woes to us in broken English.

On the oil spill

2010-07-19T17:08:00.000Z

We started to see evidence of the Deepwater Horizon spill when we arrived in Mobile, Alabama. The lady at the tourist info place we visited reckoned accommodation was scarce and prices had gone up because of clean-up operations. It's supposition but there were people with serious looking equipment in their pickups staying at the same motel as us. Driving along some of the roads that bordered water - the gulf especially we could see boom laid out and clean-up crews and machinery on beaches. They must have being doing their jobs right as we didn't see any actual fouling of the beaches we visited.

In Pensacola a guy came over and chatted to us at the motel. He was there working on cleaning beaches. I didn't really catch what he was saying because I was sitting a little further away and reading the paper. From what I overheard though he was saying that himself and a lot of other people have work now because of the spill. This contrasts sharply with the articles in the newspapers which have focused mainly on the loss of income for people like fishermen and the inadequacy of BP's payment process. It should be noted that at least one of the articles were fairly balanced, praising BP for modifying contracts in the favour of fishermen now working for them in the cleaning efforts. Although obviously it would be better if it hadn't happened at all.

Pensacola

2010-07-11T23:03:00.000Z

We made a bit of a false start leaving New Orleans as no-one was really watching the directions. We ended up driving through an area with quite a few flattened lots, which I guess are remnants from Katrina. A quick turnaround put us back on the I-10 and out onto the massive bridgeway across Lake Pontchatrain.

The miles rolled by quite quickly as we traced our way back to Mobile and then onward along toward Pensacola. All in it was a four state day - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. We booked into the Days Inn on the edge of downtown Pensacola. It was getting on by the time we got sorted so we jumped back in the car in search of lunch. This we found in the form of nice sandwiches at Hub Stacey's. It was nice to find something not quite so large as we had been eating for lunch.

The temperature was, in a word, baking, as we drove along the scenic highway to Bay Bluffs Park where we had a walk along a wooden boardwalk. I really enjoyed being out amongst the trees listening to the cicada chirp and spying odd insects and spiders. Daz was cursing having left his macro lens back at the hotel. I switched to the 70-300 and managed a couple of okay shots.

Back at the hotel we hit the pool and lounged around for an hour or two as the sun went down. I read the paper while Gemma and Daz chatted to a worker cleaning the oil spill (more of which in a separate missive). The day ended with a trip to McDonalds and channel hopping on the hotel cable.

Onward to New Orleans

2010-07-10T12:39:00.000Z

Still not having beaten the jet lag I woke up about 1 AM and then had a weird half sleep until the morning. So I got up firmly on the wrong side of the bed. Gemma had a little practice with the car with the idea of driving us to New Orleans but that was abandoned quite quickly when Andy got out of the car ashen faced.

We filled up with fuel before leaving Mobile which in itself was an exercise in confusion just trying to get the pump going. But we were soon pushing on down I-10 and into the rain. It only took us a couple of hours to get to New Orleans and we easily found the hotel that we pre-booked via the iPod before leaving. Gemma, Andy and Jo had spent some time the previous evening looking for suitable hotels and had settled on the idea of staying right in the French Quarter. The Hotel St. Pierre looked a good bet being one of the lower priced options and a couple of blocks from Bourbon Street. The listing also boasted limited free parking which seems to be as rare as rocking horse poo in the centre.

We arrived too early for check-in so dropped off the car and had a wander and a beer and some food. After we checked in Andy got in a huff about their room because the bed was small and the toilet attached to the wall badly. Instead of going and asking about it at reception he flew into what was by now becoming a characteristic rage and stormed off. To be honest if he had just calmly said he had a problem then I would have swapped our room with him - ours being a really nice king room.

My first impressions of New Orleans weren't amazing. To be fair that is first impressions, and I am more than willing to have my mind changed. Bourbon Street and the French Quarter look like the overpriced tourist trap that I normally try and stay as far away from as possible. This is something that was reinforced when, obviously looking like easy marks the hustlers homed in on us. Daz, sensibly or not, just refused to pay after getting hit up by some scam or other but Andy handed over 20 bucks.

The mood, which was already at some kind of record low, had soured even more so I decided to get away from it and headed back to the hotel out of the way. Daz and Jen came back to freshen up so I went back out with them. Trying to find the other three was a fairly difficult because of crappy phones and a certain level of confusion. We did eventually find them in a bar watching jazz somewhat the worse for wear. After a couple of beers we left to have a stroll down Bourbon street, Gemma, Jo and Andy heading back to bars on the edge of the French Quarter. Bourbon street is pretty awful at night, music blaring out of every bar and people hawking for strip shows at every turn.

When we got up in the morning I decided that I was going to do our own thing, wanting to get away from the stresses of the previous day. We went up to St. Louis cemetery number 1 as it was not too far from our hotel. This is a fairly small block filled with above-ground tombs in various states of repair. I especially found the tombs with small offerings interesting, things like small toys, strings of beads and make-up adorning some of them. Daz and Jen were already up there so we carried on with them, getting a street car over to the Garden District. This area is how I'd always pictured New Orleans, informed by descriptions of it in things like Ann Rice's books. Some of the houses in this area are simply stunning.

After a brief shopping stop on Magazine street for the girls and coffee for me we took a street car back into town. We left Daz and Jen on Canal street, had a pretty rubbish lunch in the food court of the mall by the aquarium and a stroll down to the French Market. I can't imagine why anyone would want a dried alligator head but there were plenty for sale.

Back at the hotel we availed ourselves of the pool before lazily readying ourselves to go out for the evening. We'd ummed and ahhhhed about where to go for dinner that evening but settled on the Gumbo Shop on St. Peters street. We got a lovely seat in the patio area and both my crawfish étouffée and Gemma's jambalaya were good. Gemma found hers a bit spicy so picked out most of the meat and shrimp leaving me to demolish the rice.

We were in a a pirate bar(!?) later when Jo and Andy caught up with us and the four of us grabbed a beer and took a leisurely stroll down Bourbon street and back to the hotel.

Mobile

2010-07-09T14:15:00.000Z

With the aim of getting the maximum time possible in New Orleans we decided to break the journey in Mobile. We quickly realised when we got there that there wasn't much chance of doing anything significant as most places were closed following the 4th July celebrations. We had a chat to the very nice ladies at Fort Conde, essentially a tourist information and small museum. They were fairly down on our chances of doing much interesting but did point us at a few things.

We went for lunch at a place Jo's guidebook described as doing killer sandwiches. They weren't kidding, certainly in my case. All feeling somewhat lethargic we booked into and travelled to a Comfort Inn a short way up the highway. We all agreed to have a chilled day and try and recover some of our energy, which is what we did. The others went in the pool - during which time it tipped it down. I just hung out watching daft stuff on BET and then films. If I thought the ad breaks were annoying in films on British TV...

Montgomery

2010-07-07T16:33:00.001Z

Jet lag beat me, seeing me have a restless night culminating in me being wide awake at four a.m. I think most of the others had a pretty similar experience. I sent some e-mails and planned the route to Montgomery on the motel wifi. It really is pretty cool being able to travel with such a little device and do this kind of stuff. It's something that I've had a vision of in my head whilst on our longer travels in the past, but which has really come of age now.

I had another bit of a roam around in the sunshine while the others ate breakfast at the ihop. Unfortunately the tourist information in Morrow was closed, not unsurprisingly really, it being Sunday. I had hoped to fill the glovebox with maps and things.

We set off toward Montgomery, pretty much immediately missing our turn off because Gemma and Andy were dicking around with the stereo settings. We didn't go too far out of the way though, and needed to stop to put air in one of the tires though. Buying water and getting change for the air, Daz got asked whether he was Australian!

I sat daydreaming out of the window and watching the trees go by as we cruised down the interstate. I saw quite a few birds of prey, I'm wondering whether they were eagles based on their very large wingspans.

Arriving in Montgomery we stopped briefly at a Best Buy store to buy mobile phones. $20 each with $30 of calling credit wasn't bad. I had a bit of a job getting the thing setup with google voice as the mobile site doesn't allow the setup of new numbers. I wrangled with it for a while and eventually managed to get everything sorted.

It being the 4th July we had pre-booked our hotel before leaving the UK. A Hampton Inn right in the centre of town. It was very nice and Gemma and I struck lucky with our room which was massive. They say, "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun", so that is what we did. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and Montgomery seemed deserted as we walked round, the locals obviously sensible enough to stay in air conditioned comfort. Lunch was another belly stretching affair, chopped pork sandwiches all round and pitchers of ale at Dreamland BBQ. Insanely tasty barbecue sauce.

The Capitol building was a pretty impressive thing. Lots of statuary relating to the confederate side of the American civil war. We had a slow amble round the grounds before the baking heat worked up a thirst in us. Fortunately the Montgomery Brewing Company was a few blocks away and happy to provide a few pints of ale to slake it. Or for those that chose soft drinks endless refills until they had to ask for a pause before they swelled up.

As we left the town was getting busy with people arriving for the Biscuit's baseball game as well as the concert and fireworks for the 4th of July celebrations. Daz and I took a wander through the massing people whilst the others freshened up back at the hotel. The band had started on-stage by the time we got back down to the riverfront.

There was a lot of renditions of the national anthem mixed amongst the party tunes, with the whole crowd rising hand on heart. I was struck by just how earnest the people here are. And whether I agree with it or not, they certainly truly believe that they are the land of the free and the home of the brave. It would be easy to dismiss it and take the piss but I'm not going to because the people we spoke to seem very warm and genuine.

I guess the only downside of the party in the park was the selection of beer being limited to American lagers like Miller and Budweiser and the price of them, but that was more than offset by the atmosphere. The fireworks were cool, but I didn't manage to get any good photos unfortunately. The finale was especially impressive.

The truck/Morrow

2010-07-05T11:38:00.000Z

We had pre-booked and pre-paid for the largest car we could book with Virgin Holiday's. We all knew that we were going to struggle with luggage space, which is why I'd taken the smallest bag possible. Everyone else had a somewhat larger case though. To that end the guy at the desk tried to sell us an upgrade to a larger vehicle than the minivan we had booked. Thinking of the cost they decided not to upgrade (I was looking after the bags at this point, not being a driver). When we got down to the garage though we realised what a struggle the luggage was going to be in the minivan class. I reckon with a seat dropped and maybe camera/ day bags on laps we could have just about managed. Andy rather lost it and flew into a bit of a strop of the "I told you so variety".

I told Gemma to run back and stick the upgrade on our card just to get us into a larger vehicle. One of the hire place employees came over and spoke to them about upgrading. Gemma asked about cost and was told that there would be no charge, we were doing him a favour as he wanted to keep the minivans back. Bonus - it pays to talk to the guys in the parking garage obviously.

So we ended up with a huge truck, a Suburban. It's got more than enough room for all the luggage in the back, and, I think room for 8 people. It really is super-huge. We all piled in and with Andy muttering, "On the right", to himself we set off.

Finding the general location of the Red Roof Inn on Morrow was fairly easy. Finding the entrance road not so. We ended up doing quite a bit of driving backwards and forwards because the directions I'd written out were rendered a bit useless because of roadworks and quite small signage pointing out the access road. The frustrating thing being that we kept driving past the big sign for the Red Roof. When I say big, I probably mean massive! We got there in the end though, checked in and had showers.

Jo was trying to have a sleep so the rest of us had a bit of a poke around. The motel is in a typical American off the highway sort of place, so not too conducive to walking, so we didn't make it too far.

Jo surfaced so we went for some food at the Cracker Barrel just up the road. I think the others were quite impressed by there first experience of American service, and also the gut-busting portions of food that we had. On top of the multiple aircraft feedings it was a bit of a struggle. Still I managed to polish off a plate of chicken in gravy and rice, and drank about a gallon of iced tea.

After over 24 hours awake and wobbling slightly from all the food and, in my case, the weird rocking dizziness left over from being on the plane, we all headed to our respective rooms.

On our way

2010-07-04T10:06:00.001Z

I had to set an early out of office on my e-mail at work to let me wind down the number of jobs I had to do. Gradually I cleared the decks though and the end of Friday eventually appeared and let me get off home. Jen and Daz picked us up and we set off for Bury to spend the night with Jen's parents.

After a very nice picky tea, Jen's dad twisted myself and Daz's arms and took us out for a couple of pints at a microbrewery in the locality. If I'm honest it wasn't much of an arm twist that convinced us, although, also being honest we probably shouldn't have been drinking ale as it played havoc with both our guts the next morning.

An early start was made even earlier by a text message from Andy waking us up. I am still pondering how to repay him for that one. I am sure I will think of something. Jen's dad took us to the airport where we had a reasonably uneventful check-in and boarding, other than me being selected for a body scan going through security and then a pat down at boarding. That isn't overly uncommon though, I think I just have a suspicious looking face or something.

I normally find plane journeys uncomfortable, dull and boring. Delta 065 being no exception. The lack of seat back entertainment systems didn't help, although having the ipod touch was a boon. Jo didn't feel too good throughout the flight, which was unfortunate. The guy next to me was fairly comical and kept nodding off and doing that head-fall-forward, head-snap-back thing.

On arrival at Atlanta things took a turn for the confusing. The information given out on the plane, via the in-flight magazine and video was that despite having filled in an online ESTA form the green waiver form would still be required. Signs at the airport seemed to confirm this but neither the plane or the airport had forms available. After baggage claim we had to re-check our baggage and go through the whole security theatre of taking our shoes off, random body scanning - which I avoided, and luggage X-ray. Then had to take a train to another baggage claim area for more waiting about staring at a carousel. I am still utterly confused as to what purpose that whole thing served.

Upcoming US trip

2010-06-20T09:46:00.002Z

Gem and I are getting our boots on again, just on a mini-trip this time. We're off to the South of the USA for a friends wedding, taking in a bit of a road trip beforehand. This time we're travelling with another two couples, which is really a new one for us. I'm looking forward to it, though with a little bit of trepidation. When we've spent time travelling with others it's often-times been quite difficult for me. I tend to be the 'right, let's just do it' type, rather than the canvassing everyone's opinion type. There have been times previously that I've been in groups that have spent 45 minutes trying to decide whether to go into a coffee shop or not. However, the people we are going with are good friends, so I'm sure it'll be fine.

So very roughly the plan is to fly into Atlanta, head to New Orleans and then from there up across the top of Florida and to Charleston for the wedding.

North Yorkshire

2010-03-19T17:45:00.002Z

For my recent birthday, Gemma hired a car with the idea of going somewhere, possibly Bletchley Park. In the end I decided not to go there, but rather have a drive up into North Yorkshire. We set off reasonably early in the morning after a head-shaving disaster was narrowly averted. Fairly quickly we were off the main roads and heading toward Whitby, through the stunning North York Moors National Park.

At Whitby we swung down the coast toward Robin Hood's Bay, a little gem of a village that winds down the cliff to the beach below. We had a very chilled day poking about on the beach looking in pools, looking for fossils by the cliff and then walking along the clifftop. When we drove into Whitby we were struck by the contrast and quite appalled at the number of people there. We only stayed long enough to get some cash out and then jumped in the car and drove to our ultimate destination, the Fox and Hounds at Ainthorpe. We'd booked a room there the night before, so rolled up late afternoon, checked in and enjoyed a pint.

After a bit of a rest in the room -chilling out at the seaside is an exhausting business, we went back down into the bar and settled in for the evening. And a nice evening it was. Well kept ales and a very lovely meal made me rather happy.

We'd worked out on the previous evening that Andy and Jo were only about 20 miles away so we set off on the Sunday morning to meet them. Unfortunately for their patience but fortunately for us we went the wrong way down the road. This led us on a very circuitous and winding route up and down hills and down tiny roads past tiny farms and villages. Eventually we managed to orient ourselves, with rather more luck than judgement and reached the place we were meeting them. We drove out to a couple of pubs, one of which we had lunch in, somehow managing to squeeze in amongst the Mother's Day diners.

So overall a very nice and chilled out weekend. Thank you Gemma.

Moved to Sheffield

2008-09-25T18:23:00.001Z

We've gotten our boots on and moved to Sheffield. Gemma has started a course at Hallam university and I'm currently looking for work. Not as exciting as tromping about all over the place, but I'm still quite excited by the whole thing.

Terribly bad at updating blogs

2007-10-14T16:31:00.000Z

OK, so I know I said I would try to keep updating this blog with any travel that we did including just round the region. So I failed.

The summer was almost uniformly awful weather-wise, which did hamper our movements slightly. The super quick summary is:

Jo & Andy's wedding. In Nottingham, very good, very messy.
Visited Wakefield & then my Mam in Great Lumley following the wedding.
Went to the Latitude and Eastern Haze festivals, both of which are practically on our doorstep.
Ended the summer with another wedding, of Darren (my cousin) and Penny.

Disco inferno

2007-05-29T15:10:00.001Z

Leadmill burger van fire @ Sheffield
Originally uploaded by timparkinson

At the weekend we travelled up to Nottingham. Gemma was there for bridesmaids dress fittings and Jo's hen night. Andy on the other hand was having a fairly sedate stag night in Sheffield, so I went with him. He, quite sensibly in my opinion, didn't want any of the normal shenanigans that go along with such evenings, just a nice meal and a night out with his mates.

That's pretty much what we had. We got to Ste's house in the afternoon to find him complaining that he had to go play a gig whilst having an illness. Bird Flu he thought it was. After he left to go soundcheck we met up with Daz and Ian and went to the pub down the road.

Noodle King was Andy's chosen restaurant, and very nice it was too. I was a little disappointed that for a Thai place, all the staff were Chinese, so I didn't get to practise my Thai. The food was nice though which made up for that.

After calling into a couple more pubs on our way to the Leadmill we found the entrance blocked by a couple of police officers and a burning burger van. The policewoman was pushing Andy around and telling him to get round the corner because of the threat of exploding gas cannisters. I think Andy replied something to the effect of, "How am I supposed to take a photo from round the corner", wielding his phone in front of him.

We gave up waiting about for the all clear and went for a drink in the cinema bar instead. It was 1 o'clock by the time we got into the Leadmill. That's the first time I've been there and I very much enjoyed it. When we left all the kebab shops were closed though which was a bummer.

Nottingham

2007-01-17T11:14:00.001Z

I decided to keep writing in this blog about any travelling we do, including that which is a lot closer to home. This weekend we went up to Nottingham to visit Jo and Andy, but also trying to see some people that I’ve not seen in years too. Two birds with one stone and all that. I know that Nottingham is not such an exciting destination, given that I lived there for many years, but it is a destination nonetheless.

It always feels strangely like coming home when the train pulls into Nottingham station. I wonder how many times I have passed through that station over the years. Andy was attempting to shoe-horn the car into a parking space when we got outside, so we saved him the bother and off we went.

On Friday night we met an old colleague of mine, Lez, and his wife Claire in the Hard to Find Café on Mansfield Road. It’s not all that hard to find as the sign clearly states it’s position. It was good to see Lez again, after maybe 5 years or so. We were also surprised by seeing Graham, another old colleague from the same place. Max turned up too, which was also unexpected and nice. I’m afraid that I very quickly slipped into the same rate of drinking that I was used to when I used to work with these guys, something I’m not used to now. It was probably not a good idea to open bottles of cider when we got back to Jo and Andy’s house.

I felt pretty grotty for the whole of Saturday. Other than a brief foray into Arnold to sort some things out we spent most of the day in front of the TV. We were supposed to be going to the Orange Tree to see Formication, the electronica project of an old uni friend of mine, Alec. I was sort of alright until I took a couple of tablets for my headache. The tablets had the unfortunate side effect of upsetting my stomach. Although I managed to endure the bus journey into Nottingham without splashing sick about the place I wasn’t confident I could manage the pub. So we turned away from the door, me breathing deeply and doing gassy little pre-vomit burps. I’m really disappointed that I missed the gig, as I really wanted to see Alec.

Jo is getting married in the summer and Gemma is a bridesmaid, which meant they had to go into Nottingham and look at dresses on Sunday. Thankfully Andy and I managed to escape the dress shops and look at cameras and pots and pans instead. After drawing a blank on the dress front we drove out to a country village pub for lunch. Lunch was alright, but Gemma’s vegetarian Sunday lunch option -just veg and a pudding and no gravy -wouldn’t win any awards.

What now

2007-01-02T17:03:00.001Z

It is strange being back in the UK after 7 months away. Both Gemma and I are currently floating about in a bit of a daze. We had hoped that whilst away we would come up with an excellent plan for what to do with the rest of our lives. We failed.

As with the year that we spent in Australia, I have come away from this trip really appreciating time. The great thing about a trip like the one we’ve just had, for me, is not necessarily the places we’ve been or things that we’ve seen, but rather the feeling that I own my own time. I haven’t had to get up in the morning and go to work. I haven’t had to do anything at all. Other than mostly very vague and changeable plans, we were able to decide what we did on an almost daily basis. That feeling can be daunting; there is a big world out there and lots of stuff to do. Mostly though, I found it liberating.

Saying all that though, we did go to some brilliant places and did see some lovely things. As ever, the natural world was the highlight. I love wildlife and I love beautiful scenery and this trip gave us the opportunity to see plenty of both. I think for both of us, having a large group of Elephants surround our car after a couple of days of wildlife spotting was probably a highlight although there were many other wonderful moments.

I know that some people would have been to more places than us in the time that we’ve been away, or done different things in the places that we have been. I’m a lazy traveller. I don’t like to rush or to try and cram too much in. I’d rather treat the time like a holiday, which it was. So we may have missed some ‘must see’ sights. So what? They’ll mostly still be there. I’ve certainly come away with a long list of places that I would love to go back to.

I’m just sad that our diary and photographs may not have gotten across how wonderful our experiences were. I’m not the best writer in the world and find it much more difficult to explain positive things than negative things, thus it may seem like I’m moaning a lot in the blog. I know that my blog posts are probably as dull as ditchwater to most readers due to their excruciating level of detail. That’s because I don’t have the best memory for place names and the like and intended my diary as a place I could keep track of that kind of thing. Having friends and family use it to keep track of what we were up to was a pleasant side effect.

Since we’ve been back we haven’t seen very many people due to Gemma falling ill with a nasty cold almost immediately, and the fact that my body is refusing to accept it is on UK time now. Still, virtually everyone we’ve spoken to has asked the question, ‘What was your favourite place?’ It’s an impossible question to answer as everywhere that we have been has been so different. Each place has had it’s highs and lows and each has an individual charm.

So, what now for Get Your Boots On? Many people have said to us things like, ‘Oh, this will get it out of your system’, ‘time to settle down now’ and ‘it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.’ I’m not sure that I agree. If anything I only want to travel more. I’m not sure whether I would want to go away for quite as long, at least not any time soon. I might be feeling that I want to put down some roots now. To find a base to which I can return. Both Gemma and I would like to travel within the UK and also within Europe so perhaps that will be next.

Surprise Surprise

2006-12-28T19:02:00.001Z

Our final part of our trip was spent in San Francisco and it was a very nice place to end our trip on too. Prior to arriving in San Fran we had spent a wet and pretty miserable few days unable and un- motivated to do what we had hoped (ie winery visits) because of the weather and sheer frustration of actually getting anywhere due to the roads and traffic.

The weather improved whilst we were in San Francisco though and it was a novelty not having to use the car to get anywhere. Instead we had a lovely few days actually walking and riding the ‘cable cars’ (trams) up and down the hilly streets. Our first ride on, we had to hang on the side and it was fun clinging on as we sped down the hills.

Our hotel was really nice and centrally located on Union Square which was handy for exploring the city. I found it to be a really pretty, picturesque city with lovely buildings and it felt quite festive too, although I wasn’t sure about the puppys in the window of Macy’s department store!

We decided to check out the modern art museum one day mainly because part of it was photography. As part of the modern art there was an installation that was worth going just for that. This consisted of a large video projection of Turkish people singing Karaoke of The Smiths! Some of them were really terrible and some of them were really good and sounded exactly like Morrissey (including a girl) and some were even crying as they sang. As is usual when I leave modern art galleries I left feeling bemused and slightly confused, but with the feeling that I had at least done something cultural!

I had been feeling very excited about our surprise return home and we had been concocting all sorts of lies about what we would be doing Christmas and new year eve which I began believing myself after a while. The day came for the final leg of the journey. The flight was very full and 10 hours and no sleep later we arrived in foggy U.K. We circled round Heathrow for a while because of the fog and I couldn’t wait to get off the plane. Coming through arrivals I felt a little sad as there were lots of people waiting for passengers but not us as only my Auntie Jean and my friend Nicola who booked our ticket home knew of our return. The rest of my family wouldn’t know for another few days either as we had stops in Slough, Durham and Nottingham to make before returning to Lowestoft.

Of all the places we’ve been, Slough was definitely the highlight of the trip. It was lovely; foggy, cold, wet and the hotel room was so large and good value (not).We fell asleep in the room straight away and then couldn’t sleep all night and it was a very long night. Finally it was time to pick up our hire car and I had to get used to gears again as we drove up to Tim’s mum’s near Durham. It wasn’t a bad drive considering the problems with the fog the U.K had been having and we arrived 7 hours later.

We spent a couple of days with Tim’s mum then drove to Nottingham and stayed with Jo and Andy for the night before leaving for the big surprise on Christmas Eve. We made good time and my excitement turned to nerves for some reason. I just hoped it would all work out OK. In the end it couldn’t have been better. We parked down the road so they wouldn’t hear us pull up, snuck down the road and rung the bell. We were waiting for a while because it turned out Mum and Roger thought we were Carol singers (oh yes, they were in the festive spirit!) but when they came to the door I couldn’t have wanted a better reaction which you can see on the video below.

With the shock still reeling through Mum she drove us (rather erratically) round to my sister’s. She was expecting my mum so didn’t come to the door as I walked in. I walked in to the kitchen where Joanne had her back to me and I said “hello”.She turned round and her face was the picture of shock for what seemed ages! Then she squealed and cried. I like to think that they were happy to see me and that all the tears were tears of joy!

Next I saw my nephew Max who has grown so much. Then we met my niece Lily. She is so gorgeous. She is looking so healthy and happy now and she never seems to stop smiling. It felt so good to be back with my family again. At times it was hard to be away especially when Lily was ill and it is such a relief to see her now doing so well.

It is good being back, but also a bit strange. When we first arrived it was very weird being back and everything so familiar seemed strange at the same time. I felt a bit spun out at first but maybe that was the jet lag. Everyone keeps saying, “oh you’re back to the real world now” I’m not sure I’m quite ready for it yet!

Operation Surprise Return

2006-12-27T10:46:00.001Z

It had been quite hard for us but we had managed to put Gemma’s Mum off the notion that we might be returning for Christmas. Instead when we spoke on the phone or by e-mail we constructed a fairly intricate web of lies about what we were going to be doing over the holiday period. It took a little while but eventually the family bought it. The actual plan, of course, was to turn up in Lowestoft and surprise everyone. It worked like a charm.

At San Francisco airport we were pretty early for check-in. The girl on the desk informed us that the flight was overbooked and asked whether we’d like to volunteer to be bumped in the event of no shows. After some umm-ing and ahh-ing we decided against it. We’d planned hotels and hire cars for our return so we thought we better just go. What gave us pause was the fact that volunteers who are bumped on Virgin get a free return flight (or the equivalent frequent flyer miles) anywhere on the Virgin network, plus the usual nights accommodation. That’s a pretty good offer in my book. In the end though the flight had enough no shows that the volunteers weren’t needed.

The flight was fine but tiring. I didn’t bother trying to sleep and just watched films and TV shows for the 10 hour duration, interspersed with the odd game of Tetris. Once in the UK we had to circle London for about 20 minutes because of the fog. I was grumbling because by that point I just wanted to get off the plane, but it wasn’t any real hardship compared to the poor folks caught up in the chaos of trying to leave on domestic and short haul flights during the next few days.

Because we knew we’d be of no use after the flight we’d booked a room at the Slough Travelodge, definitely the highlight of our trip. Not. Still, it was a convenient stopping off point and easy (i.e. cheap) to reach by local bus. It served it’s purpose well. We wanted to try and fight the effects of jet lag by staying up until later in the day but as soon as we sat on the bed we dropped off and were snoring. Unfortunately this had the knock on effect that we woke up at 22:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep again.

In the morning we caught a cab over to the Hertz rental office inn Slough. I was glad I’d pre-booked everything when the lady said that their Heathrow office was out of cars and sending people to Slough for them. Another side effect of the fog related chaos. Our car was a little Fiat Punto. I reminded Gemma that she had to change gears and we were off into the fog.

It took us about 7 hours to drive from Slough to Great Lumley in the North East. The fog had caused accidents and we had to contend with some fairly slow moving traffic near Nottingham. I mused that out of the places we’ve had a car on this trip the UK seems the easiest to get round. We couldn’t surprise my Mam as she is hard enough to get hold of on the phone, never-mind in person! We spent a couple of nights with my Mam and managed to see my neices and nephews and my friend Lisa, which was nice.

Rather than drive straight to Lowestoft we decided to break the journey for an evening in Nottingham. We didn’t get away from the North East until about 14:30 which meant it was dark as we arrived into Nottingham. Gemma hasn’t had much experience of driving at night and doesn’t really like it because of the headlights reflecting on her glasses. Still, we got to Jo and Andy’s house in one piece. It was nice to see Jo and Andy although I couldn’t keep my eyes open and was like a nodding dog pretty early in the evening.

Because of my messed up body clock I was up at about 06:00 and doing the washing up. We managed to get a pretty early start away from Nottingham and had a reasonably clear run traffic-wise except for getting stuck for a while behind a man who refused to do anything even approaching the speed limit. As we neared Lowestoft I think Gemma began to get a little bit nervous. To keep up the surprise we parked round the corner and snuck up to the front door. I think Gemma’s Mum and Dad may have thought that we were carol singers to begin with as they didn’t open the door for a while. Once they did come to the door though the surprise was sprung successfully, as captured by me:

San Francisco

2006-12-26T06:59:00.001Z

We checked in to the Travelodge at the airport in San Francisco. The reasoning was that we may as well be near the drop off point for the rental car, and this way we would avoid having to deal with city centre traffic. In the morning we dropped the car off and went into the airport to sort out the re-validation of our tickets. What should have been a quick job ended up taking ages. The Virgin desks don’t open until 12:30, and the ticketing desk not until 13:00. That meant we had to wait around to see the ticketer. We had asked another of the desk staff, who checked and then took our tickets away, but she returned them telling us to wait.

After we had the little sticker allowing us to fly we caught the BART into San Francisco. We’d done a little bit of homework and pre-booked a hotel right next to the BART station, The Powell. It was a little more expensive than some of the other hotels we’d looked at, but was worth it. The room was really nicely and newly refurbished and the hotels location couldn’t have been better, literally in the middle of everything and right next to the cable-car turnout.

We took advantage of the 3 day MUNI public transport pass, very good value at $18, considering a single cable-car ride costs $5. The cable-car’s were cool. It was fun watching the drivers and conductors turning them manually by pushing them round on a circle in the road. Old school. The first car we took was full inside so we had to hang on the exterior platform which was cool. Every time I turned and looked at Gemma she had a massive grin on her face. At one point we went rather fast down a very steep street which was quite exhilarating. We spent a nice couple of days charging round the city on the cable-cars and sometimes on foot.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern art confirmed my suspicions that modern art is rubbish. Not all of it was crap, some was interesting. We saw a video installation of Turkish people singing karaoke Smiths songs. I quite enjoyed that.

Do you know the way to San Jose

2006-12-26T06:56:00.001Z

Do we know the way to San Jose? Almost. We missed the exit ramp for the route that we had planned and so had to work it out a different way. To be fair, the way that we ended up going was a bit more sensible than the route we were going to take anyway so it all worked out OK. We were actually staying just outside of San Jose, at Fremont Days Inn. I had rather too much wine and felt a bit hungover so we had yet another day of vegging out.

When we left the Days Inn we drove into San Jose to go to the Tech Museum. The museum was very interactive as one would expect from a technology museum. It was pitched more towards children although there were some pretty cool things in there. I think Gemma liked it more, she was quite excited and crawling through tunnels and things. I enjoyed the IMAX dome cinema where we watched a film called Mystic India. The shots of Indian temples, jungles and the Himalayas were beautiful. I also really liked the 3D earth exhibit. A large sphere hangs from the ceiling and four projectors each hooked up to a computer display a spinning globe overlaid with various data. Very, very cool, I want one.

Wine Country

2006-12-25T10:36:00.001Z

We paused our southward journey on highway 101 in Santa Rosa to have a quick look in a couple of shops in a large mall there. Big mistake. The traffic was awful so getting back on the freeway took an age. I’m sure the inconsiderate driving style that people have over here doesn’t help these situations. We were only back on the freeway for a very short time before we reached our goal for the day, Rohnerts Park Ramada. This was to be our home and base for the next three nights. The motel is well situated for the freeway, but otherwise in a completely unlovely location in the middle of a huge trading estate.

The plan was to use the motel as a base for exploring the wine country of the Napa and Sonoma valleys. The plan didn’t come to fruition however. The weather was awful and had a very negative effect on our moods. I’m starting to believe that we are solar powered. So instead of lazily visiting wineries and sipping their produce we mainly holed up in the motel watching TV and looking at stuff on the Internet (via a power-line router). We did manage to take a drive out to Copia in the Napa Valley. Copia is a centre for American food, wine and the arts. On entering we were a little unsure what to make of it as it was very warehouse-like and very empty. We picked up a schedule and had a quick look around. In the upstairs gallery we found an exhibition of wine photography which was pretty good. We joined a ‘lecture’ downstairs. This consisted of a taste of a wine and then a completely unrelated overview of the lecturer’s favourite Christmas children’s stories.

We tasted a sparkling wine, some cheese and some pomegranate juice before going on the orientation tour, which at 30 minutes was far too long. Copia doesn’t have that much stuff going on. We left the tour at the museum-like section which had some interesting displays, some interactive, about food and wine. Apparently my ideal meal would be mashed potato and mayonnaise.

On the way out of Napa I thought we could be clever and drive back a different way. I found a suitable road on the map and had Gemma get us on it. The road was possibly the steepest and most winding road we’ve been on in this trip. Eventually we negotiated ourselves up, down, up again and back down and out into the Sonoma valley. We just drove through rather than stopping off anywhere, because the rain had started in earnest.

North coast

2006-12-13T17:50:00.000Z

From Santa Cruz we continued on highway 1 toward San Francisco. The road hugged the coast, not so hilly as further South but still with it’s own rugged charm. We stayed on highway 1 and went straight over the Golden Gate bridge. An unfortunate haze lay over the bridge and city so the obligatory photograph stop on the North side hasn’t produced much of worth. There was a detour on highway 1 which forced us through a very winding forest road. San Francisco almost seems to demarcate a line in increased forest growth between the northern and southern parts of California. We stopped for lunch at the small town of Stinson Beach.

It was pretty late in the day by the time we reached the lighthouse at Point Reyes. The lighthouse is supposedly one of the best places on the coast for whale watching but our late arrival meant we couldn’t spend too long there. Despite this it was a lovely spot and the drive there was good in it’s own right.

Back on the highway and with night falling we pulled into a motel in Bodega Bay. It was a little more pricey than we’d have liked, but we needed somewhere by that point. The lady running the place gave us a leaflet for the Italian restaurant next door which offered a free bottle of wine with two mains. We took them up on the offer but felt a little bit scruffy and out of place there. The wine was OK, although probably not worth the $24 that was crossed through on the bill.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse and we had quite a bit of rain the following day. For this reason the day was mainly spent driving up highway 1. We stopped off in the pretty little town of Mendocino for lunch. We’d had Mendocino or it’s near neighbor Fort Bragg marked down as a possible stop off, but because of the rain and as it was still early we decided to press on. Instead we stayed in the town of Eureka, simply because we had a coupon for a motel there. I didn’t see much of the town, but what I did see was quite unlovely. When we went for dinner at the Denny’s on the next block a shady looking bloke that had been smoking in a doorway started to follow us. We picked up our pace and hustled into Denny’s quick-smart.

The North coast is where the big redwood trees grow, which was the reason that had drawn us up there. Along the coast are a series of national and state parks protecting areas of the forest that once covered a massive amount of the Northwest. The rain was spitting on and off as we drove up through the towering trees. We stopped for a short loop walk through the forest. The individual trees that we were looking at were not the tallest of the species, but they were pretty big all the same. The grove was very quiet, we only passed four other people on the trail. The two of us got neck ache from staring up at the giants.

Along the highway we saw elk grazing on grass at the side of the road. A little further on at the place called Elk Meadow we stopped and looked out for elk. I think they were all at the side of the road because they certainly weren’t in the meadow that was named for them. We did see a coyote there though so perhaps they ought to rename it Coyote Meadow.

Further into the national park a scenic drive cuts away from the highway. Unfortunately the road was closed, possibly because of the weather which was starting to turn for the worse. Grumbling, Gemma wheeled the car around and retraced our steps southward. We turned off the highway and took the Avenue of the Giants scenic drive going South. We abandoned the lovely forest at the southern end of the drive and rejoined the highway. The rain got worse and the sky was getting darker as night drew in so we gave up driving when we hit Ukiah, and booked into the Holiday Inn Express.

Road rage to Redwoods

2006-12-13T17:42:00.000Z

Leaving Monterey we stopped at nearby Pacific Grove to see the Monarch butterflies which apparently are in abundance from November to March. We took the walk where you can see them and saw.... 2. Apparently they can look like leaves on trees, so maybe we saw more than we thought, but we had visions of them flying around us. We quickly left and ventured onwards towards Santa Cruz, stopping for a coffee in the pleasant Capitola. I wished we had stayed there when we arrived at Santa Cruz. It kind of went down hill from the moment we arrived. Looking for where we were going I accidentally cut the jeep that was behind me up (I was convinced no one was behind me) I was aware of him when he beeped and hung out of his window and shouted. I was even more aware of him when I pulled into a road and he followed stopping behind me when I pulled up to get my head together. I felt nervous as he approached the car but I had no choice but to open the door. He shouted at me and I apologised profusely which seemed to do the trick and as soon as I said sorry he calmed down. Lucky for him I’m not a psycho and I didn’t shoot him or something. I couldn’t believe that he came after me. You just don’t do that... in my book anyway. People cut me up and I grumble to myself a bit, but I wouldn’t dream of going after someone.

After that incident we found our motel. Too early for check in we went and checked out the boardwalk which had the sea side array of roller coasters and funfair rides. It was all closed though and we were practically the only ones about. It was time to check in so this accomplished we ventured out again. Again we walked down the board walk. This time there were a couple of drunk people arguing and one lying passed out on the beach. Despite the beautiful sunny day I felt like there was a heavy cloud hanging over us and the place. Tim voiced how I felt saying he felt really depressed! It was so weird. It was like Great Yarmouth in Winter but with nice weather. There was a weird atmosphere in the air. I had expected Santa Cruz to be really happening and maybe it is, but not the day we were there. To be honest I couldn’t wait to leave. We carried on into town to see if the cloud would lift. Unfortunately it didn’t so we gave up and went back and hid in our motel!

The next day we made our escape and headed towards San Francisco. We got on to the open road and I felt relieved to be on them as I had not enjoyed driving in towns thus far. We drove straight through San Fran as we will be returning later for Christmas and drove over the Golden gate bridge. We stopped when we reached the other side to look over the bay, bridge and city. It was very hazy, but still pretty. Past San Fran we noted the increase in the amount of trees around us. We drove on to Reyes Point, more beautiful rugged coastal scenery with a lighthouse at the end. After unsuccessfully whale watching across the broad waters we drove on, calling it a day at Bodega Bay, where Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was filmed and where we went to a posh Italian because it was near and we’d get a free bottle of wine.

After Bodega bay the coastal scenery became more wild and rugged with massive waves crashing on the beach below us. We stopped for Lunch at Mendocino and decided to drive on to Eureka. I liked the name, I thought it sounded promising, so thought that was as good a reason as any to stop there. The drive was quite nice, if a little scary, the area becoming more like a murder setting in a horror film, driving through forests with the occasional shack hiding in it (Obviously where the psychos live)windy roads and very little traffic. We had come up to these parts of Northern California to see the Redwood trees, the tallest trees in the world. Facts about the Redwood tree, courtesy of Lonely Planet are: Redwoods now only grow in China and two areas of California and a small grove in Oregon. They can live up to 2200 years, grow to 370ft tall and achieve a diameter of 22ft at the base, with bark up to 12 inches thick.

Continuing on our way to Eureka we passed a small town where a sign informing us of a tree that we could drive through! As it was getting on we thought we might check that out on our way back down. We also said that about the shop selling Big Foot merchandise. Yes, we were in Big Foot territory too. Not only did we have a chance of seeing Big Foot, but we could also buy a wooden life size sculpture of him.

Eureka did not match it’s name. It was full of traffic and was like a lot of towns we had seen so far, like a big industrial estate. The bad weather had started to set in too which didn’t help. We used it as an over night stop before heading to the Redwood National park. Near by we drove through a small scary looking town where the only shops all appeared to only sell giant wooden sculptures of bears and Red Indian faces. Maybe these are the essential items in those parts. We noted the mist hovering above the dense forests before we had a lovely walk through a forest of Redwoods. Before going in we noted the sign telling us what to do in case of an encounter with a bear or Mountain Lion and were told to walk through the forest making plenty of noise to alert them to our presence. This wasn’t hard for me as I am as agile as an elephant, so I happily plodded through the beautiful forest of towering Redwoods made more atmospheric with the rain and mist in the trees. As with any trees especially big ones these were magnificent and beautiful. After our walk we went to find some Elk which are throughout the area and were surprised when we happened upon them on the side of the road. As it wasn’t the best place to stop we decided to go to the specific viewing area to see them. However there were none there, but we did see a Coyote, a canine animal which looks a cross between a fox and a wolf. I was really chuffed to see it and we watched it for a while, before driving off and seeing more Elk on the side of the road.

As the weather wasn’t conducive to walk on nearby beaches and as a scenic drive we had hoped to do was closed we decided to start heading back down the coast. This time we drove part of it down the 32 mile scenic alternative of the Avenue of the Giants, a road which winds through California’s largest Redwood Park which covers 53,000 acres. It was lovely driving down the road with the magnificent trees towering over us on either side.

Unfortunately we will not be coming home with a life size model of Big Foot. We decided to by pass it mainly because it was raining which made the already isolated, foreboding looking shop look even more so. We also bypassed the drive through tree deciding that we didn’t need to drive through a tree to marvel at the size of them.

Yankee Yarmouth

2006-12-12T08:01:00.000Z

It took us some time to get out of Monterey. We’d gone for a look at the very pretty Pacific Grove area but true to form managed to end up going around Monterey twice trying to get on the freeway. Not far North of Monterey is the town of Santa Cruz. We arrived a little early to check in to the Knights Inn there, but as it was located near to the beach boardwalk we thought we’d have a quick walk down there.

There is something a bit sad and depressing about a seaside town in the off season. The roller coasters are not running, the doors are locked and the place resembles a ghost town. Even the once inviting bright colours of the buildings seem to mock. Santa Cruz boardwalk was very much like that. The only sounds came from the hideous cackling of an animated figure in the one arcade that was open and the arguments of a pair of drunk people on the bench at the end. It reminded me very much of Great Yarmouth in the winter. Despite having something that Great Yarmouth lacks in December, the sun, the mood was the same. A certain dissonant chord seemed to hang over the town, putting me on edge. I’m sure there was something bad in the air. On the surface Santa Cruz seems like a pretty good place to be, full of punks, surfers, skaters and hippies, but the atmosphere grated on me like fingernails being scraped on a blackboard. I hid away in the motel for much of the day, briefly venturing out again to the boardwalk to take some photographs to remind me of what had put me in such a dark mood.

Marine Life Tastic

2006-12-12T01:50:00.000Z

After Santa Barbara we continued up the coast stopping at various points to admire the scenery. We had glimpses of the coast driving along sometimes, but it was the area known as Big Sur where we hugged the coast, following the road high above the vast blue ocean. Before we started on this road though we stopped at Piedras Blancas to look at the elephant seals on a beach near the highway. Sometimes there can be thousands on the beach but although there were quite a few there were not a thousand. We stopped at two beaches to see them. On the first beach we saw females and a couple of what we thought were rocks, but which turned out to be Bull Elephant seals. They were absolutely massive. On the next beach there were again more females than males but there were some massive bulls lying among them.

In the next few days, marine mammals continued to be a theme. We travelled along the winding roads hugging the coast of Big Sur stopping at various points to admire the vast blue ocean stretching far away into the clear blue sky. At one point we looked out and at every point we looked at in the sea there were pods of dolphins jumping and swimming. The road is high above the sea which allows a good vantage point out over the ocean. Below us the cliffs dropped into sea crashing against craggy rocks. At another point where we had stopped we saw a whale spouting water. These sightings were quite close together which suggested the area was very rich in marine life.

The next day we retraced our steps to return to a part we had had to miss the previous day due to having to find accommodation. On the way we stopped at a scenic lookout and as soon as we got out of the car heard the bark of seals down below. Looking over we saw loads of seals on rocks and swimming about. I could have stood for ages just listening to them. Their barks were echoing up the cliff and made it sound so haunting.

We continued on to the part we had missed which was a waterfall falling into the sea. The waterfall was not very spectacular, a thin sliver, but picturesque all the same, falling on to the sand of a secluded cove with turquoise seas and craggy rocks. On the way back we stopped again to hear and look at the seals, this time also seeing four Condors flying over the cliff on the other side of the road.

After our lovely journey along Big Sur we arrived at Monterey where more marine activity awaited. The town itself we found quite frustrating to get around, with lots of traffic and annoying junctions. We booked on a whale watching trip hoping to see a Blue Whale, something which is at the top of our wildlife watching “ambition” list. However, when we booked it the lady said they hadn’t been sighted since June so we knew our chances were slim. Never mind, we still booked on to see (hopefully) Humpback Whales. The day before they had only sighted one, but on the list of sightings for previous days, 1000 dolphins and 25 killer Whales had been seen!

We arrived at the Wharf early for the trip and watched a couple of seals and sea otters in the harbour. The sea otter was really cute, swimming about on his back playing with sea kelp (which they also use to anchor themselves to the spot to sleep) and diving down to get shell fish which he then cracked against the jetty’s legs to open. Leaving the harbour on the boat we went past lots of seals and sea lions sitting on the breakwater with Cormorants. Some sea lions were swimming in the water and seemed to show off to us, flipping out of the water.

Out on the water, although a lovely day, it was absolutely freezing. The ride initially was a bit rough with the spray hitting us and we clung on whilst intently looking for a sign of a whale. We were called to the front of the boat to see Dall Porpoises (black and white) swimming along playfully with the bow of the boat which were lovely to watch. Two hours later, I think people were feeling a bit despondent when the Skipper said he had spotted a whale in the distance breaching. We travelled towards it looking out for the tell tale sign of it breathing (water spouting). Eventually we saw the spouting with the mist evaporating in the air. The whale had just taken a breath to go under to feed so we had to wait for it to come up again. We got a few good looks at it few times before it went under again. At one point it seemed quite playful playing with sea kelp something which the Marine Biologist on board said she has never seen before. We did not see any more whales, but I still enjoyed it. We had seen Humpbacks before in Australia where they were all round the boat playing with it. I think this one was concentrating on it’s food (which I can’t blame) You just can’t predict when you will see nature. The marine biologist said the day before she had gone out looking for dolphins on Big Sur and had not seen any. That was the day we saw about 1000 of them!

You’d think we’d had our fill of marine life by now, but never ones to miss an aquarium we felt we had to go to the one in Monterey which we’d heard was very good. On the way, Tim was like a small child, very excitable and he continued to be so all the way round the aquarium. I felt like I had taken a child out and I looked on with that proud, pleased smile parents have as they watch their children having fun! It was a brilliant aquarium though. I do believe it may surpass Sydney which is a very good one. It is in an old sardine cannery factory and has the old fittings all around, making it look really swanky. The displays were excellent and they had a separate children’s section which looked great. The thing that most amazed me though was a creature that I never knew existed. The sunfish swam past me in a tank and I couldn’t believe that it was real!

Monterey

2006-12-09T02:08:00.000Z

Our time in Monterey was a mixture of happiness and sheer frustration. We checked into the Knights Inn which we’d pre-booked via Expedia. As an aside, we’ve been using Expedia quite a lot recently to look for cheaper rooms and have been finding it hilarious. The entries for individual hotels include traveller reviews. Some of them are pretty funny, people giving negative reviews for reasons like, ‘The toilet seat was uncomfortable.’ or ‘There were homeless people in the area.’ Understand that we are generally talking about the budget motel places, not exactly the Hilton.

Our first afternoon in Monterey introduced us to the source of our frustration, the road system. We had some problems finding our way in initially because the exit signs from the freeway didn’t correspond to anything at all on our map. Not such a problem, and we worked our way back in the right direction. The problem was that, this just continued throughout our time in the town, every time we went anywhere, despite having a fair idea where to go, we seemed to spend ages going round in circles. Sometimes I was to blame, sometimes Gemma was to blame, but mostly I blame the street name signs being so small you needed a telescope to see them, random one way streets and seriously strange junctions. Not knowing our way round the city it was very easy to miss a turn-off. Not normally a problem in most grid-layout towns. Here though we’d end up on the freeway going in the wrong direction then have to circle right back through town.

Our second day in the town was quite a full one. We were up and out bright and early for the whale watching trip that we’d booked the previous day. I decided that given our ‘adventures’ with road directions that we’d better leave plenty of time but as it happened we got there really easily and quickly. Because of this we were able to spend some time hanging around on the wharf and watching the birds, sea lions and sea otters in the water. An otter was diving next to the pier, pulling up shellfish which it would then crack against the pilings of the pier. Once the shell was open the otter would float on it’s back chewing happily.

Our trip was with Monterey Bay Whale Watching Centre, the only operator with a marine biologist on board. The boat pulled out into the bay passing the breakwater, every square inch of which was taken up by sea lions or birds. Monterey Bay is a marine park and a haven for marine life of all sorts. Not far out into the bay is an underwater canyon. The waters of the canyon are very nutrient rich and therefore rich in plant and animal plankton. This in turn supports the rest of the food chain including many marine mammals. Not far out into the bay we were joined for a short time by a pod of Dall’s porpoises, they skipped along by the bow, easily outpacing the boat.

The whales however were more elusive. It took about two hours before the boat’s captain announced that he’d seen a whale breach four or five times ahead of us. The captain got us up quite near to the whale, a humpback, which decided to become a bit shy and spend only a short amount of time on the surface. No more breaching, but we did see plenty of blowing, a couple of good views of the tail flukes as it dived and the whale playing with a patch of floating kelp.

If I’m honest, we’d been hoping to get a close up look at a grey whale or a blue whale, both heavily featured in the leaflet that we’d picked up the previous day. I try not to be disappointed with these things though as seeing any wild animal on a trip like this is a privilege.

Back at the wharf we wolfed down fish and chips before moving quickly to the aquarium. I have a bit of a thing about aquariums. The Monterey aquarium was fantastic. Set in an old sardine cannery, the aquarium focuses on the marine habitat out in the bay. It does have a small tropical section so the kid’s can see Nemo, but otherwise keeps it pretty local. It’s a very swish complex, lot’s of interactive exhibits and lots of very interesting marine life. The jelly section was especially fine and had me entranced. It may have been the best aquarium I’ve been to. The aquarium was funded by the Packard family (of Hewlett Packard fame), and David Packard even built some of the equipment in his garage. I think this is pretty cool.

Big Sur

2006-12-09T02:04:00.000Z

In the morning we checked out and headed back on route 1 towards the coast. Our first stop was just down the road in the town of Morro Bay. Passing by three large smokestacks from an old canning factory we arrived at Morro Rock, a very large rock connected to the town by a road. Lots of people were out fishing and birdwatching along the breakwater. It was the perfect day for it with blue skies and warm but not too hot.

Not far from Morro Bay is the small town of Cambria, where we stopped for a quick lunch. There are three parts to the town, an older part, a newer touristy part next to the highway and a beachfront part. We ended up by bad judgement at the second of the three, although it was reasonably pleasant.

William Randolph Hearst (on whom Citizen Kane was based) built a huge ‘castle’ in the area. We passed it on the highway, but declined the idea of taking the tour. We were much more interested in what lay about five miles up the coast, a large seal colony. We stopped in two of the parking spots in order to get a good view of the elephant seals in the colony. During December the bulls come in to shore so we were able to see several of the huge animals along with the smaller females. When I say huge I’m not kidding. I was blown away by the size of them.

Back on the highway and we were soon in the area known as Big Sur. Big Sur is not really a specific town, rather the name for a stretch of the central California coastline. From the moment we hit the southern part we were travelling through jaw-dropping scenery the rival of any we’ve seen thus far on this trip. The craggy hills run right to the ocean with the road winding precariously along the side of them. Our average speed plummeted, but this was all the better to enjoy the views. We stopped in several small parking areas for a look out over the ocean. We were rewarded at two of these over and above the views of beautiful little coves. At the first we saw pods of dolphins leaping, so many of them that almost everywhere I rested my eyes I would see a group. At the second a white spray from the water alerted us to the presence of a whale, most likely a grey or humpback whale migrating to it’s winter breeding grounds.

The sun was getting lower in the sky and not wanting to rush on to Monterey or drive the winding coast road in the dark we decided to book in somewhere at the village, the place that is sometimes shown as Big Sur on the map. The village is a rather scattered lot of accommodation and eating choices. We pulled in and got a room for the night at Glen Oaks Motel. The room was a little over-priced for what it was but beggars can’t be choosers.

In the morning we turned back and went South again to visit places that we’d skipped over in our hurry to get a room the night before. A short way down the coast we came to a state park which is famous for it’s waterfall. We jumped out, paid the day access fee for the park and walked round the the waterfall view. The waterfall wasn’t too spectacular, but the coastal scenery was. Little unaccessible beaches nestled between rocky outcroppings and the sun made the ocean sparkle. On the way back northward we stopped at every turn off to check out the view. It continued to be beautiful. In several of the clifftop stops the barking of sea lions echoed loudly. The top of the cliffs was a great vantage point for watching the seals cut through the water. We took our time travelling up the road until we’d passed the limit of Big Sur and reached the towns of Carmel and Monterey.

San Luis Obispo

2006-12-05T05:23:00.000Z

Not far from Santa Barbara, California Route 1 heads inland for a time. This prompted much grumbling from the drivers seat to the effect of, ‘I thought it was a coastal highway, where’s the bloody coast then.’ Thankfully the road turns back to the coast at San Luis Obispo Bay. The bay consists of some small seaside towns and the grumbling stopped as we pulled into Pismo Beach, the first of them. The town was packed with surfy types and people generally just enjoying the weekend weather so it took us a little while to find a parking spot. We took a walk along the pier, watching the surfers and the pelicans doing their respective things.

Being at the beach and it being sunny gave me a craving for ice cream. I couldn’t see anywhere to buy it other than the fishing bait stall on the pier, and I was a little dubious in case they kept the two in the same freezer. Instead we jumped in the car and drove on up the coast to the town of Avila Beach. We felt like proper Americans driving 10 miles for an ice cream. Avila was much less busy than Pismo, but was just as nice. We found a great little ice cream shop, bought a cone each and made for the beach. Avila has another lovely pier, as well as a platform underneath it from which one can see starfish clinging to the wooden supports of the pier.

We decided to book accommodation in the town of San Luis Obispo, nearby but inland. I sat in the car using the laptop to jump on the wireless connection of the hotel we were parked by so that we could book something, the Ramada Inn. Back on the road it was only 15 minutes before we were checking in, having chosen the motel for no other reason than it had a guest laundry, something that was fast becoming a critical need.

In the evening we walked into town for food, finding the excellent Natural Café. Gemma was excited because they had a jacket potato with steamed vegetables on the menu, possibly the blandest dish in the history of cooking. Needless to say that is what she ordered. We’d read about a couple of places to have a beer, but couldn’t find one of them. The other had about 6 people hunched over their drinks at the bar so I decided I didn’t fancy it. Instead we went back to the motel and drank Canadian cider whilst watching a terrible horror film (Monster Man).

Santa Barbara

2006-12-05T05:22:00.000Z

From Mojave we took the road toward Los Angeles. Instead of entering the city we veered off towards the coast road and the town of Santa Barbara. We’d pre-booked some accommodation as we’d read it can be hard to find a room in Santa Barbara. After check-in at the, quite expensive, Sandpiper Lodge we drove down the main road and into the town centre. The sun was shining and it was pretty warm, in contrast to the chilly temperatures we’d had inland. Santa Barbara is a nice little town and we had no trouble whiling away the day. We had to stay in the town centre as there was a Christmas parade on in the evening. Actually it was called a holiday parade for reasons of political correctness. Gemma insisted that we stay on and watch it because the parade’s master of ceremonies was Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future fame.

The parade went on for ages. I think my feet began to bleed. Endless columns of marching bands, gymnasts, cheerleaders and the like walked past us, most putting in a very half hearted effort. Every time there was a break in the flow of paraders I thought my luck might be in and the parade might be over, but it wasn’t to be. More people would come from up the road and march past us. We were stuck. The car was parked in a multi-storey directly across the street being used for the parade. We couldn’t risk dashing across for fear of being trampled by baton twirling teens. Just when I was beginning to think that I might be stood there all night the last float came past and the crowd began to disperse. We did get to see Christopher Lloyd come past in carriage, waving regally to the crowds. He didn’t go back or forward in time though, which was quite a disappointment.

Mojave To Santa Barbara

2006-12-05T05:21:00.000Z

Leaving Las Vegas we headed through the Mojave desert to Mojave town. We thought it would be as good a stop as any especially because Tim had heard that planes are kept here to preserve them and so we thought that sounded like an interesting sight.

The journey was a good one, driving along near deserted roads, except for gigantic trucks, through the desert past a few ramshackle houses and alongside a freight train which looked picturesque chugging along against the backdrop of the mountains and the otherwise sparse land.

Approaching Mojave town we saw the massive wind farm before we saw the few planes which were behind a fence. There were also a few old fighter planes as well. However, the scene wasn't as bizarre as we had imagined, but undeterred we stayed the night anyway. We stayed in our first motel. The sign wasn't a broken neon one I'm afraid and there were no mafia murders (to my knowledge) although there was a connecting door to the next room and we could hear them quite plainly. I thought I might have been hearing a murder about to happen or at least a loud argument, until I realised it was their T.V.

To carry on with the bad film theme we had our tea at Jerry's restaurant which could have been in any American film complete with booths, local clientèle and waitresses who call you honey. Now I realise that I have made several references to American film and T.V but I guess they are the reason everything seemed so familiar, so sadly, when I see Chips going down the free way I get excited. Case in point the next day watching a Christmas Parade in Santa Barbara.

Driving to Santa Barbara the local radio announced that the Christmas Parade was on in town that night. Liking a good parade I was quite pleased anyway but I was even more pleased when they announced that the master of ceremonies would be Christopher Lloyd AKA Doc out of Back to the Future. Now maybe I was a little bit too excited by this but Back to the Future was a good film and when I was young, my sister and I watched it a lot.

Santa Barbara is a very pretty town and we had a nice day wandering round in the sun. I was a bit perturbed as the homeless people seemed better dressed than us. Making me feel even worse was the fact that being the messy eater I am I was wearing part of my lunch. I daren't sit down on a bench in case someone felt sorry for us and gave us their spare change.

We noticed with amusement that people had 'reserved' their spots for the Parade on the side of the pavement by placing their chairs and blankets, some locked to lampposts. At 6.30 we were waiting for the parade with the owners of these chairs. I felt sure the parade was going to be something pretty spectacular. I'm not quite sure why I thought that, but I was wrong. I thought that Lowestoft carnival was more professional! It was like any other parade in any other town but it maybe went on for a a bit longer. It was quite annoying because at the part where we were standing the parade would seem to have a break from their respective performances. For example the bands would stop playing, only to start up again further down the road, so all we got were a few randomly shouted 'Happy Christmas's'. You might say well why didn't you move. Well there were quite a lot of people and moving might have meant seeing nothing at all. In hindsight that might not have mattered, but I did get to see Christopher Lloyd who rode past us in a horse drawn carriage so all was not lost! Although I don't think my saying this to Tim made him feel better about standing on the side of the road in the cold watching a never ending parade.

LA to Las Vegas

2006-12-05T05:20:00.000Z

The flight from the Cook Islands to LA wasn't hideous, with a brief stop in Taihiti where more cheery singers welcomed us making me wish we were staying for longer than an hour and a half. LA was our destination though and after a night at an airport hotel we were picked up by my cousin, Rachel who lives nearby in Orange County. It was great to see her and she took us to her lovely house where we stayed for a few days with her, Pat, Katy and Sean and Mitzy the dog. It was great to spend time with them in their home; a bit of family life and normality was welcomed. They took us to Newport beach and Crystal cove (In Pat's enormous truck) where we walked and watched the sun go down and we also had our first American Diner experience.

We had no real plans and so we didn't really know what we were going to do after leaving Rachel's. Pat said 'Las Vegas is fun' and so we decided to head there first. Rachel took us to collect our hire car and I agreed to hiring the Pontiac, a red sporty number that they offered us because they had no economy class cars. I think Rachel was jealous of my new car! It has features which include being able to turn the engine on remotely (why you would want to do that I do not know, but it amuses us. It's like Kit out of Knightrider!) I said Goodbye to Rachel feeling sad to do so, promising to ring her when we got to Vegas. This had a pleasing ring to it and although I was nervous about driving in The States, I also felt excited about our road trip to Vegas as did Tim and as we pulled on to the freeway we settled into our new car. I got used to driving it pretty quickly and felt fine about driving. As we travelled along the Freeway, I commented, 'if my driving instructor could see me now' (I think he despaired of me for a while when I was learning to drive 2 years ago).

I enjoyed the drive to Vegas although it took a bit longer than planned due to a traffic jam. We travelled through desert of sand and low scrub for a while when suddenly seemingly out of nowhere a town appeared. The town was Primm, which has casinos and over the top buildings as well but just not to the same scale as Vegas. It looked so out of place in the desert. Arriving at Vegas, singing the obligatory 'Viva Las Vegas', the sun was setting and the surrounding mountains and desert looked beautiful and unreal especially as it was the backdrop to the surreal city of Las Vegas with it's massive neon signs and bizarre buildings. We found our hotel, the casino The Excalibur, a massive toy town looking castle. It was exciting to be in Vegas.

Unfortunately it was also very cold. The wind was blowing and it was icy. Probably due to this the strip wasn't as busy/manic as I had expected it to be. We spent a fair amount of time in the casinos, due to not wanting to be in the cold and also because half the time we couldn't find our way out! They are designed well. Tim and I gambled hard and fast....on the 1cent slot machines! I got very excited when Tim won $20 and at one point the waitress who comes round to take orders for the free drinks remembered us. It was quite embarrassing when she said 'appreciate it again honey' when I gave her her tip from my pew next to Tim on his slot machine.

I think I have watched too many films, but I expected a lot of the clientèle to be glamorous so I was feeling rather scruffy in my travelling gear when we ventured out the first night. I needn't have worried as no one else was! I did consider buying a velour tracksuit to fit in but for some reason Tim wouldn't let me.

We had hoped to see a show whilst here and I was determined to as it is probably the only time I'll hear Tim say 'let's see a show'. However, we didn't fancy any of them. The only one we did fancy was Penn and Teller but disappointingly they were booked up. Also the free show of the battle at Treasure Island was closed for repairs so we couldn't see that. However we did see the dancing Fountains in front of the Bellagio which were impressive and we had a great time going round the casinos and walking down the strip. It just felt so different to anything we'd done so far. I usually hate slot machines and never let Tim go in the arcades in Lowestoft (bad teenage memories) but this was fun and Vegas is so over the top (although I'm sure it could feel more over the top on a weekend) that you can't help get into the spirit of it.

We went to Red Rock Canyon one day, a 20 mile trip to a beautiful canyon. Going here made me see there is so much more to Vegas and also it made the city seem even more bizarre: a huge neon city plonked in a desert. I'm glad we went to Vegas. I didn't get married by Elvis. Maybe next time.

Mojave

2006-12-03T01:32:00.000Z

When we left Las Vegas we made the decision to give Los Angeles a wide berth. We didn’t want to drive back in and get snarled up in heavy traffic on the freeways. Instead we turned off I-15 at Barstow and headed towards the town of Mojave. This is in the general area as the desert of the same name so for miles the road snaked through flat scrubland bordered by mountains. It looked almost as if you could reach out to the horizon and crumble them. Incredibly long trains rolled slowly through the desert as we outpaced them on the road, empty but for us and a few trucks.

We picked the town of Mojave as our guidebook said it had aircraft lying all about the place, so I sensed some photo taking opportunities. On our approach into Mojave we saw that wasn’t really the case. There were a few large aircraft, but fully fenced off within the grounds of the airport. What Mojave did have in large numbers was wind turbines. A massive wind farm covered the surrounding hills. We checked into the Econo Lodge where the guy warned us that there wasn’t anything to do in Mojave. He was right. We did venture out briefly to Jerry’s, a nearby diner, which was very much like something out of a movie. Red leather effect upholstery on the booths and waitresses that called us ‘honey’ a lot.

Bright light city

2006-12-03T00:56:00.000Z

Rachel kindly took us to the Hertz rental place down the road from her. We’d pre-booked a car on the Internet the day before so just had to pick it up. Being the cheap and cautious types, we’d selected the smallest economy class car we could. This being the US though, they didn’t have any economy sized cars available and so they gave us the choice of a couple of other cars (at the lower price we’d booked). We chose the Pontiac G6, mainly because it was red. It had automatic and electric everything including, to our surprise, a remote engine start from the keyfob. Cool. Gemma didn’t have too much trouble getting used to the power of the car and I soon settled back into my leather seat as we made for Interstate 15. Thankfully we were quite close and basically only had to make two turns before we were on it and heading toward Nevada.

The sprawl of the suburbs continued for some distance before turning eventually to desert. The mountains in the distance began to look painted onto a board. Gemma’s driving was excellent. In the beginning she had a tendency to be too far to the left, a little scary for me when passing big trucks, but she soon got over that. We paused for lunch at a small service turn off just before the town of Barstow, which earned the following mention in the Lonely Planet, ‘[Lots of travellers are] not looking for charm, nor would they find any.’

The journey from Los Angeles to Las Vegas should take around four hours with no stops. When we hit a line of stopped traffic I realised that our journey would take a wee bit longer. It was only a single lane closed for roadworks but it took us about an hour to get through it. It is good that they are repairing the road as the surface is simply awful for long stretches. Just before the Nevada state line a marker informed us that we were at 4,000 feet. Cresting the hill we saw the casino town of Primm tucked in on the valley floor looking utterly out of place in the desert.

We were singing Viva Las Vegas as we turned off I-15 and into the parking lot of the Excalibur, our home for the next two nights. Although our guidebook claims that true luxury comes cheaper in Las Vegas than virtually anywhere else in the world, we had decided that we’d treated ourselves enough and plumped for the cheaper option. Entering the fantasy castle that is the hotel we’d barely made it to the check-in desk before being jumped on by very jolly staff asking whether we were a couple and whether we lived together, because of a special promotion for couples. After desperately contriving a way to satisfy their documentary requirements as to our status as a couple they offered us free show tickets, a holiday package plus a cruise. Guessing where it was heading, we asked about the catch. ‘None,’ the guy replied, ‘we just ask you to visit our property off the strip, where we’ll feed you and...’ I stopped him mid-speech to ask if it was a time-share. When he replied in the affirmative we shook our heads and said we weren’t interested. Even if all the free stuff was on the level I have known too many people who have been subject to intense pressure from time-share salespeople. I didn’t want that, and neither did I have the time to spare to sit through a sales talk. The rest of our time in Vegas we spent rebuffing such offers of free shows.

Our first night in Sin City wasn’t too sinful. We took a stroll through the casinos near Excalibur on the strip. The Luxor and Mandalay Bay join with it to create one big complex. We quite fancied getting out onto the strip to get a look at the casinos all lit up but were having trouble finding our way out of the casinos. They make it easy to get in there but don’t have any signs or other indications of where the exit is. After walking around in circles a lot we found our way out. Gemma had bemoaned the fact that she felt scruffy and had wanted to dress up. I think she’d been expecting tuxedos and glamour, but our walk around the gaming floors of the three casinos soon disavowed her of that idea. Velour tracksuits were more the norm, not what Gemma was imagining I think. On the strip the neon was burning bright through the dark. The casinos are just mental, huge insane monuments to their chosen theme. The light that shines from the top of the pyramid at Luxor can apparently be seen from space!

We continued up the strip to New York New York. Every few feet a guy would thrust a bunch of cards at us and Gemma would obligingly grab them. They were advertising escorts with semi clad ladies pictured on them. I think we collected the whole set. In New York New York we stopped for a drink and watched the beginning of Duelling Pianos. The hosts began to be a little forceful demanding that we had fun so we slid out. We had quite fancied catching a show whilst in Vegas but were a little bit disappointed by what was on. Penn & Teller appealed, but either weren’t on or were fully booked, either way we couldn’t go see them. There were other things on but I really didn’t fancy seeing Celine Dion. Actually that is an understatement, I would rather have drawing pins stuck in my eyes than being forced to endure a Celine Dion show.

In the morning we set off along the strip and westwards to Red Rock Canyon. I was freezing and forced to press the button that turned on the heaters in the seats. Mmmmm, warm cheeks. Although the park lies only 20 miles away from Las Vegas it took us about an hour. The park has an interesting visitors centre and a 13 mile loop drive which winds through a scenic vista of rocky outcroppings and flat plains dotted with low scrub bushes. The rocks here are vivid reds and yellows, hence the name of the park. Being out there amongst the natural and rather bleak splendour of the park brought it home just how astounding and out of place the spectacle of Las Vegas is.

All in the drive out to Red Rock took most of the day, so there was just chance for a Krispy Kreme doughnut before it got dark. We walked up the strip in search of the free entertainments. Unfortunately the Treasure Island show, in which a battle between a couple of full size ships leads to the sinking of one, was closed for renovations. Instead we made do with the fountain show at the Bellagio. This was pretty damned impressive, with massive water jets synchronised to classical music. By the time we’d watched two iterations of the fountain show my head was beginning to go numb with the cold so we popped into Ceasar’s Palace. We made our way back down the strip, stopping at the casinos along the way for a drink (free whilst gaming) and a go on the slots. We stuck to the 1 cent slots, sometimes winning a bit, other times losing. We are the last of the high stakes gamblers. Back at Excalibur, I quite fancied switching to a table game like roulette or blackjack (I’m no poker player), but by this time the low stakes games were all quite crowded and I didn’t fancy the $50 minimum bet ones. Instead we played some more slots for a while, trying, unsuccessfully, to win an Orange County Choppers custom motorcycle.

I quite enjoyed Las Vegas. The sheer scale of the casinos and their utter grandness and silliness is amazing. Miles and miles of neon tubing. Watching people chained to the slots is quite funny. When I say chained I mean it literally, lots of people have loyalty cards for each of the casinos on strings around their necks and plugged in to the machines. It wasn’t quite the mad cacophony of light and noise I thought it would be on the gaming floors though, in fact it was quite subdued. Perhaps because it was a weekday. At one point an alarm went off and everyone barely paused pushing buttons to crane their necks around their machines, perhaps looking for a super jackpot winner. An announcement later told that it was a false alarm on the fire system. It’s a good job that it wasn’t a real fire because nobody moved!

Coming To America

2006-11-29T07:05:00.000Z

The flight from Rarotonga to Los Angeles was a pretty nasty one. It didn’t leave until nearly 23:00 and then had a stop at Pape’ete in Tahiti. We had to leave the plane for an hour and sit in a, admittedly quite nice, transit lounge. Back on the plane our hopes of stretching out were scuppered by the arrival of someone in the third seat in our row. Damnit. The rest of my flight consisted of the usual uncomfortable shifting about. I discovered I could drop off if I lay down with my head in Gemma’s lap, but the circulation in my leg would be cut off and I’d be unable to feel it until I pumped my foot for about 20 minutes. I gave up.

Quite sensibly we had predicted what we’d be like after the flight. Although we’d arranged to go stay with Gemma’s cousin, we had booked into a Travellodge at LAX for our first night in the USA. We didn’t think it was fair to land on Gemma’s family all smelly and worn out and just wanting to go to bed. We rang Rachel (the aforementioned cousin) and arranged to be picked up the next day. Our first day in the USA wasn’t too exciting. We uploaded some photos to flickr, had dinner at the Denny’s restaurant attached to the hotel, channel surfed and slept.

In the morning Rachel came to pick us up and take us to her home in Yorba Linda, Orange County. We had an excellent couple of days just vegging out with the family and their lovely dog, Mitzi. We had a day out at Newport Beach, which I believe is the setting for The O.C. TV show. After a meal in a ‘50’s style diner, finished off with a pumpkin flavoured milkshake (super-nice by the way), we walked along another beach which was part of a state reserve. The beach was pretty cool, with some rock-pools full of anenomes and hermit crabs. As an added bonus we got a nice sunset thrown in. It was great to meet everyone and to have a chilled few days, as if the pacific islands hadn’t been chilled enough!

Back to Raro

2006-11-25T01:45:00.000Z

Flying out of Aitutaki we caught glimpses of the lagoon and I could imagine how amazing it would look on a clear day. Arriving back in Rarotonga the weather wasn't much better there with cloud and wind. I guess it is cyclone season after all. We had booked an over-budget place in Muri as everything in our budget was booked up. We specifically chose Muri as the beach looked lovely and picturesque with a few small white sanded islands out on the lagoon. We had visions of us spending our days here snorkelling and kayaking out to them. Nature had other plans. The weather was consistently ominous with clouds hanging over, a wind blowing and occasional rain. Instead we lazed around in our lovely unit which had a view of the sea, reading on the sun bed outside when it wasn't raining and listening to local radio with local music (ukulele based) and coverage of Miss Pacific! It wasn't quite what I'd planned but I enjoyed it anyway. The unit was very homely and even had a separate living area. That is novel after living out of a van and one bedroomed places for months. I really appreciated the couch to lay on! It's sad really. When you travel it is the little things that really count, like clean clothes and settees!

The lagoon which had looked so blue and inviting didn't look so the couple of days we were there, being swirled up by the wind. However, as kayaks and snorkels were included in the price we decided to make the use of them. Annoyingly there weren't any masks and snorkels left, but we dragged a kayak into the sea. I forgot how bossy Tim is in a kayak. All my dreams of gliding, relaxingly through the calm inviting sea were dashed with every order barked and every wave that broke over the kayak drenching me in cold water. It felt like we were kayaking at home, it was so cold. I think I have said it before but snorkelling and kayaking haven't been very successful this trip. Whenever we plan to do it something gets in the way, e.g. jellyfish season, weather etc. (although we have managed to get a bit of snorkelling).

The morning we checked out of our Muri accommodation (which we had to leave as it was booked up and plus we couldn't really afford it anyway) we hired a car for a few days. It was a little red one (I know I'm such a girl) and it felt so weird to drive after having driven the van in NZ. I felt like I was driving a dodgem car; really close to the ground. It was an automatic again. I'm a bit worried that I'm going to have forgotten how to use gears!

We drove over to our new accommodation near where we were when we first arrived. It was across the road from another lovely beach. With the weather still iffy we drove round the island not caring when it rained because we had a new car/toy. So the rest of the time was spent doing this, reading, going to “our”café in town (I have a new obsession for grapefruit juice) and enticing fish with old bread. The cloud finally parted one day and in true British style I raced to the beach across the road from us, laid out in it and then went home surprised at how burnt I was. I looked ridiculous with a bow shape from my bikini on my back! That night we went in search of live music in town. We didn't find any, but had a really nice night anyway sitting at a bar overlooking the sea and 'the World', the cruise ship. Then having really nice fish and chips overlooking the harbour as we nosily watched the people disembark onto the harbour from 'the World'.

On our final day I got more of the snorkelling I had been waiting for. First we went out from the beach across the road from us. It was OK with quite a few fish but no coral really. I had read that the best place for snorkelling on the island was opposite 'Fruits of Raratonga', a shop on the South of the Island. As soon as we stuck our heads under the water we saw loads of fish (and we were only in the shallows) They were quite big ones too and were quite bold, coming up to us. We saw loads of butterfly and Angel fish and my friends the Trigger fish too. We also saw lots of other lovely colourful ones but I don't know their names. It was a satisfying snorkel and feeling elated from that we drove to Muri beach to get some in that we didn't manage to when we were there. Again it was not to be though as although the weather was lovely, a canoeing competition was being held, and we didn't fancy getting in their way. It didn't matter though, we felt happy enough with what we had done.

In the afternoon we headed out in the car again for a photography mission. Our first stop was a small botanical gardens, stopping in the garden's cafe first. I had a lemon meringue cheesecake which was gorgeous. Again, the simple things, but cheese cake and lemon meringue pie are my favourites so I was probably a bit too pleased about this combination! After a walk around the gardens we got back into our oven and trundled round again. In the end we decided to give up on the photography as it was a bit difficult to stop in some places to get photos. Instead we headed for Trader Jacks, a bar by the sea.

Our time in The Cooks has come to an end now. I have loved it here. It is so laid back and friendly, so beautiful. I have enjoyed the South Pacific a lot and would definitely come back. (Although I would go back to everywhere we have been) I feel like it has an honest charm about it.

We are currently waiting for our flight to leave. As usual we are about 7 hours too early! I have had my wish granted though and finally got that garland that has been eluding us. Tim and I were the only ones sitting in the small airport, other than a little girl who put her garlands around our neck. I think they look better than they feel though as they are very strong smelling and sticky round your neck. Tim pointed out all the insects crawling round it too and I decided that maybe I didn't want a garland after all.

Aitutaki Lagoon

2006-11-25T01:44:00.000Z

The plane to Aitutaki was a tiny one and we boarded it feeling quite excited by our excursion. The flight was only a 40 minute one and we were looking forward to looking out at the end of it over the apparently beautiful lagoon which is what draws most visitors to Aitataki. Unfortunately, all we could see out of the plane was thick cloud and we groaned as the pilot announced heavy rain. Never mind, we still felt excited about being there. We were greeted off the plane with a man with lots of umbrellas and a bus to take us to the airport. As soon as we were on the bus we were at arrivals. They were obviously very scared about anyone getting wet. The bus took us round the back so we missed the welcome to Aitutaki entrance with someone handing out garlands. We have yet to receive a garland despite seeing lots of people wearing them. We are trying not to sulk about it. The obligatory ukelele player was singing his welcomes and despite the torrential rain everyone around me seemed in good spirits.

Our accommodation was a thatched hut overhanging a white sandy beach with (of course) clear blue sea. In a break in the rain we made a dash down the road to find somewhere to eat. We didn’t find anywhere and the rain caught us out. We slunk back to Puffy’s, an empty, open sided restaurant next to our accommodation and sat looking like sorry, soggy and lonely individuals munching on our fish and chips with the rain lashing around us outside. We hoped the rain would abate for the next day.

Our hopes weren’t granted and the next day the wind and rain continued. We got taken around the island on an “island tour”which took about half an hour. The island is smaller than Rarotonga. There are no dogs on the island and I asked the lady why. She looked to the heavens and gave a small smile and said everyone asks that. (That’s because in the accommodation in the information it says, “ask someone why there are no dogs on Aaitutaki!” I expected her to relay a magical story related to her ancestors, but she merely said “because they are dangerous. They bite people.” Feeling conned with this explanation we continued with our tour, on the way back stocking up at the “supermarket” which is like a corner shop at home.

The next day the weather had improved very slightly so we hired the moped which was free for a day with our package. The girl showed me how it worked and watched unsure as I wobbled, stop, starting around the lawn. With her back turned as she returned to her desk I jetted around like a pro. Honest. I told Tim I was ready and he clambered on the back looking slightly nervous. As I wobbled off down the road he ordered me to stop, let him off and come back to get him when I could ride it! I could ride it when he wasn’t on it. It’s a bit difficult when there’s a heavy weight on the back.

With the hang of it, I collected Tim and we sailed off down the road....with old and young locals whizzing past us on their mopeds. We had a great day pootling round the island, waving at locals and admiring the scenery. The island has a very long airstrip with a road running parallel to it. It was quite windy when we travelled down this seemingly never ending straight road. I was concentrating on not being blown off the bike and trying to breathe through the wind whilst Tim was no doubt clinging on for dear life when he suddenly shouted, “this is just like in Top Gun!” (You know the bit where TomCruise is riding his motorbike at full speed next to the runway with his love interest hanging on the back) Oh yeah, it was uncanny, except I was Tom Cruise and Tim was love interest!

After our day of Top Gun action we went to a local bar, The Crusher bar. When I say local it was local. Approaching it we could see it wasn’t very busy but the people that were there, of which there was about 7 or 8 were all seated around one table. As we walked in their heads whipped round to see who these strangers were. The barman shook our hand before he served us and then invited us to join the table. I felt so uncomfortable at first. Imagine the scene. 7 or 8 people all seated around who know each other well, bandying jokes and conversation about... and 2 people who obviously know nobody, grinning away like idiots whilst occasionally shifting uncomfortably in their seats and talking to each other furtively about anything they can so as not to look too uncomfortable. It felt a bit like walking into a small villages pub at home where everyone knew each other and everyone else that wasn’t there. It turned out to be a nice evening though and we were made to feel welcome. A few of them were ex pats from New Zealand or Australia but had been there for years. Tim recognised the man sitting next to me. It was Don Silk. We had read an article about him in the plane on the way over to Aitutaki. He is something of a local character and had just written a book. He was a really lovely bloke with interesting stories including one about how he and his mate bought a brothel. The two managers were there who had just taken it over and one of them was explaining how he wants it to be a local bar for local people. I felt a bit paranoid at this point, but I don’t think he was hinting that we weren’t welcome. At least I don’t think he was. We left the bar promising to return the next evening for a night which the manager promised is the most happening night where everyone lets go. Apparently Fridays is the beginning of a long weekend for most islanders and we were told that alcohol is their way of letting go. We were told repeatedly that that was the island way. I kept thinking that’s the way of a lot of the world.

The next day we went on a lagoon cruise. As I said earlier, the lagoon of Aitutaki is the main reason most people visit. It is reputedly one of the best in the world. The weather still looked ominous with cloud hanging over and wind, but the lagoon was really beautiful with amazingly blue, clear sea. We sailed out on to it and after awhile stopped at a reef for snorkelling. I know I keep saying it and it is probably getting a little boring hearing it but the water was so clear!. The coral wasn’t great, but we saw lots of lovely fish, including trigger fish which I love. They are really bright and pretty and have comical faces.

After the snorkelling we headed to One foot island where we spent a relaxing few hours. Our guide explained the traditional roots of the name, but I won’t go into it here. The island was stunning. After a lovely lunch of B.BQ fish we walked out into the sea on the massive sand bar. It looked like people were walking on water. The water was so clear and all around, the sandbar stretched into different shades of blue sea. We had our passport stamped at the “post office” after which we headed to another lovely island for a short while.

A lovely day was rounded off nicely with an Island night. Again, this was included in our package. Island nights are regular occurrences in the Cooks and attended by locals and tourists alike. We joined another English couple and an Austrian couple and helped ourselves to the generous buffet which had been prepared. We couldn’t identify most things. I had quite a lot of salad that night. There was something which looked like raw liver which was in fact banana pudding so I decided to try that. Everyone looked at me expectantly as I tentatively tried some. It was OK, quite rubbery but it did taste of bananas.

After the meal, drumming started. I am a sucker for drumming and this was great. It was really intoxicating. They played for a while before the dancers came out, complete with traditional robes. The girls costume consisted of coconut bras, grass skirts and flower garlands. The men wore grass skirts, and leg warmer things. The dancing was great too, moving to the drums and the uplifting singing. There were really young dancers too who seemed to love it and it was great to see that that was the case. Before they had come on they could not be set apart from much of the world’s youth really in adidas joggers etc. Apparently adults are happy that the tradition is kept alive still and I could see why.

I get the feeling that people in the South Pacific like a bit of cross dressing. (Remember Fiji) as some men came out dressed as women and did the female dance to much laughter. Tim was happy because he got a kiss of off one of them!

We were the last to leave the island night and Tim and I suggested to our group that we head to Crushers. They agreed and we headed off down the road past the goats and drunk drivers (it’s not illegal there!) We arrived to lots of vehicles outside so it looked like the banging night we’d been assured was happening. However, on walking in we were confused as to who all the vehicles belonged to as the bar wasn’t busy at all. The D.J was in one corner and a few people were squashed up against the bar, but that was it. We saw our new friends from the night before who looked quite happy to see us and with friends too! We all started to dance to the bad music which was quite painful, but eventually more people joined us. I think the locals were bemused by all our dancing as we looked like we were bad dancers at a wedding. We were equally bemused with them too as some of them looked like they thought they were gangsters. We couldn’t believe it when the bar and D.J shut up at midnight on the dot. It had only got going at about 11 pm. Everyone was very obedient at leaving straight away too (except us lot who sat on a bench outside so we could finish our drinks).

All in all we enjoyed Aitutaki and were glad we went. It is a very beautiful place. It was a shame about the weather, but you can’t control that. We enjoyed ourselves with some help from some local characters.

Back to the Future

2006-11-25T01:43:00.000Z

We arrived in The Cook Islands before we left Fiji. No we hadn't met Michael J Fox or his wild eyed inventor friend who had built us a time travelling car: We had crossed the date line. Bizarrely, even though the flight was only a 3 hour one we were now 22 hours behind Fiji. Entering the airport we were greeted with more ukulele playing and singing and people milling around waiting for family and friends wearing garlands and flower head dresses. It is just so South Pacific in the South Pacific!

We were met by the owner of Raratonga backpackers along with a few others and were all crammed into a van and taken to our accommodation. This was set back from the beach up a hill overlooking lots of tropical trees with a view of the sea in the distance.

We spent a few days here, using it as a base from which to explore Rarotonga, the principle island of The Cook Islands. Cook Islanders are Polynesians, a Maori people related to the New Zealand Maori and the Maohi of the Society islands in French Polynesia. The Cook Islands have strong links with New Zealand and so there is a Western veneer to The Cooks. The indigenous people's language is Cook Islands Maori. However, most people speak English (as a second language) Despite western elements, South pacific culture is evident in the attitude, clothes and floral head dresses etc that are worn. “Raro” as the locals call Rarotonga is only 34km circumference and we circumnavigated the island by accident when we used the bus service to go into town the first day. We went in using the clockwise bus and returning “home” we caught the clockwise bus again meaning we went round the island in about half an hour. I love the fact that they only have 2 bus routes. Clockwise and anti-clockwise. I think bus drivers must go the same international school of bus drivers though. Ours seemed a bit grumpy and got more and more indignant when people failed to ring the bell to request their stop. He had a poor little old American lady and 2 school children looking quite scared when he glared at them as they got off at each of their stops and he barked, “ring the bell. You have to ring the bell if you want to stop, then I know when you want to get off” We made sure we rang that bell when it was our turn to get off. We escaped his wrath.

The island is lovely, circled by a turquoise lagoon. One day we walked up a track through some of the dense forest which covers the mountains which rise up from the centre of Raro for a vantage point over it and were awarded with a stunning view over the small town nestled between the and out to sea over the lagoon. The rest of the time was spent reading and relaxing which seems to be a pattern since we've been in the Pacific. It is such a laid back way of life here that it can't be helped! Everything runs on Island time; laid back. When in Rome and all that! We ventured to the “police station” one day which was a big portacabin, to get my Cook Islands drivers license. This consisted of handing over $10 and getting my photo taken. I returned 20 minutes later to find my License ready with my name Gemma C LoMgman printed on it. I pointed out that my name is Gemma C LoNgman, but he just shrugged and said it doesn't matter so I walked off with my new name and realised that it enables me to drive a moped as well as a car. This would mean that I wouldn't have to take the Scooter test if I wanted to hire one. Apparently the test is really easy though. First you have to ride your hired moped to the police station! Then you have the test which consists of riding down the road turning and coming back. One bloke said he saw him write pass before he'd even gone anywhere!

We had only booked into our hostel for 4 nights and on our extensive travels round the island had found Muri beach where we hoped to move to. We caught the bus to Muri which has quite a lot of accommodation. Walking a long the beach we hoped even more to move there as it was beautiful with a few little islands dotted out on the turquoise lagoon. However, it wasn't to be. We trudged round and everything was full or too expensive. Dejected we headed back to our hostel and decided to try a last option (which was closed when we tried it) in the morning.

In the morning our last option was full too so we decided to leave Raratonga all together and go to Aitutaki, the next principal island of the Cooks. We had looked at options of going there the day before and it seemed the best way to do it was on a package with accommodation and flights included. We headed into town and by 1.30 were on a bus (with a bus driver who was much more cheerful) headed for the airport.

Bye Bye Pacific

2006-11-23T20:21:00.000Z

Checking out of Beachcomber we walked across the road to Island Car Rentals and hired a car for our three remaining days on Rarotonga. The car was a super cute little Nissan March, although it was a little bit rattly. I think being so low to the ground after the van we had in New Zealand threw Gemma a bit. We went up to the airport to get our tickets revalidated for our journey to the USA. They tried to charge us for the revalidation again but we moaned so much that she waived the fee. Indignant about it, I went in to town and resent my complaint to Air New Zealand.

We’d managed to book another place, Puiakura Reef Lodges, for our remaining time, again via www.wotif.com. Although cheaper and a little bit shabbier than Beachcomber the room was nice enough with a separate bedroom and living/kitchen areas.

We charged around the South of the island in the car for some of the morning and early afternoon. The tide was wrong for snorkelling so we had a walk on the beach, taking along a couple of blocks of fish food that we’d picked up earlier on. The lagoon in front of Puiakura Reef Lodges is probably about midway to the width that it gets to on the island. We waded out into the beautifully clear water, chucking our fish food blocks in. We did manage to entice a couple of fish in to eat the food, but not many. Two dogs jumped in next to us and swam across the water to where they could stand up on the reef then proceeded to chase the fish that they saw darting around. I could have watched them for hours.

We were suddenly awoken at 01:00 by the arrival of a new group of people to the hotel. They continued loudly talking and laughing for at least another hour, with no consideration that anyone else might be staying there and wanting to sleep. Why is it that whenever there is a group of more than three women together they turn into cackling harpies? I lost my rag and yelled, ‘Shut up!’ at the top of my voice. I don’t know whether they heard or not but about a minute later they all filed off to their rooms. That screwed my sleep up for the rest of the night. I sat stewing about it and contemplated going to the car and blasting the horn at 05:00 but realised that would be petty of me.

When I finally dragged my sorry tired self out of bed we hopped in the car and set off anti-clockwise. Gemma had read about Whigmore’s waterfall, supposedly a beautiful spot. Maybe once upon a time but the falls didn’t appear to be running when we arrived. Instead there was a stagnant pool and some slime covered rocks. I think that the island may use the waterfall as a water source now, which could explain the lack of falling water. The non-falling falls are up a road that sits next to an abandoned Sheraton resort complex. I read somewhere that the deal fell through part-way through building the complex leaving the Cook Islands government in quite serious debt. We stopped in town for a coffee and to sort one or two things out, before returning to Kavera.

The tide was on it’s way out when we got to the beach. We’d brought some bread and stood in the shallows breaking off chunks and throwing them out into the water. This time we attracted many more fish and were able to persuade them to come quite close. The triggerfish in particular were bold in their pursuit of a meal. Unfortunately, as the sun came out, I began feeling a little ill, so I left Gemma to the beach whilst I had a lie down.

I felt refreshed after my little nap and so in the evening we drove into town. Gemma had read in the guidebook that several bars have live music on. We couldn’t really find evidence of any hip and happening nightlife. We had a couple of beers at Trader Jacks and fish and chips from the shop at the harbour. Whilst eating we watched a tender plying passengers back and forth from The World, the large cruise ship anchored just off Avarua.

In the morning we awoke to the blue skies and sun that we’d been longing for. Our first stop was the beach across the road from our accommodation for some snorkelling in the lagoon. We found a spot with a wide cut-out in the limestone. We did see a few fish, but nothing spectacular. We decided to hop in the car and make for one of the snorkelling spots marked on our map. A small café, Fruits of Rarotonga, sits opposite the beach. We were only about ankle deep before we noticed a wealth of fish. The spot was excellent. The coral wasn’t great, there were patches on the limestone reef, but the sheer number of fish was amazing. We had a very nice time drifting through the channels in the limestone and following the schools of fish.

After lunch we took advantage of the continuing good weather and had a drive round the island. There is a small botanic gardens with an attached café. We stopped for a drink, although somehow Gemma’s desire for a drink mutated into a desire for a cake when she saw the menu. All full of cake and coffee respectively we took a walk through the gardens, snapping photos of the flowers. I love the flowers of the tropics, Hibiscus and Frangipani especially.

Muri beach, where we’d stayed earlier and had bad weather, was packed. A set of outrigger canoe races was happening and a lot of people had turned out to compete, to watch and to generally soak up the sun. We continued round the island and stopped at Trader Jacks in town for a beer.

In the morning we checked out, took the car back and settled in town for a fun packed day of waiting for our 22:20 flight. Urgh.

Beachcomber

2006-11-20T21:24:00.001Z

Back on Rarotonga we made our way from the airport and checked into the Muri Beachcomber resort. On Aututaki we’d made some phone calls about budget accommodation but found that it was all booked up. My hunch is that a lot of backpackers that have been in Australia and New Zealand are heading home for Christmas with a break in the South Pacific along the way. Instead we used possibly the worlds most expensive Internet café (40 cents per minute!) to book Beachcomber on the www.wotif.com site. The resort was a little more expensive than we’d like to have paid, and busy too, we could only book for two days. The unit was lovely though, and well worth the money. Kayaks and snorkelling gear were complimentary but we didn’t get to use them on the first day as the weather wasn’t great and we had chores to do. In the evening we lounged around in the lounge listening to Cook Islands radio. The station was so naff as to be really charming. They even broadcast the Miss South Pacific competition, bikini round and all. It’s a bit hard to do a beauty competition via the radio. Miss Cook Islands won it.

In the morning despite the very dark clouds looming all around us we went to get snorkelling gear from the office. Whilst they had what seemed like hundreds of pairs of fins they didn’t have a single mask and snorkel that wasn’t smashed. We asked for them to keep an eye on anyone bringing them back at check-out and to drop them in our room. At that point the tide looked a little high for snorkelling so we took out a double kayak. We didn’t stay out too long as it was a bit windy and choppy, even in the lagoon. We ate lunch at the posh Pacific resort which was next door to us to the strains of the ever present ukelele. The rest of the day was spent with our heads in our books, occasionally outside, but inside when it began to rain. Muri beach is a lovely place, but the weather just wasn’t smiling on us whilst we were there.

Aitutaki

2006-11-20T21:24:00.000Z

We awoke to a grey day, or rather I just got out of bed, having been up staring at the walls all night. I’d just read a rather academic book which had gotten my mind going, exactly the wrong thing for bed-time. We were up earlier than usual to get our things together and check out, although at that point we didn’t have anywhere to move on to. We tried ringing the backpackers on Muri beach, but they only had an expensive unit left, not so much of a problem, but we thought that we would try something else. Our fact finding mission of the previous day had been finding out how much we could get out to the other islands of the Cook Islands for. Air fares on Air Rarotonga are quite expensive, and it works out cheaper to buy a package of flight and accommodation. We gave the travel agent a ring and asked if we could go that day. Thankfully the answer was yes, so we jumped on a bus into town to sort it out. Not long afterwards we were holding some vouchers for flights to Aitutaki, the second most visited of the Cook Islands, as well as accommodation at Paradise Cove. The deal was really quite good, especially compared against the rack rates of the hotel and flights, although slightly over our rough budget.

The flight was a short 45 minute hop across the ocean, although I couldn’t see it because of cloud. As we began descent at Aitutaki the cloud got darker and the pilot announced the dreaded words, ‘Heavy Rain.’ He wasn’t lying. Just running from the plane to the minibus managed to soak us. Gemma got a look of utter dread on her face and started mumbling incoherently. I could pick the odd word and phrase out of the stream, ‘...bloody...rain...better not be like this...snorkelling...’ A short ride from the airport and we were checked in to our rather cute beach-front bungalow. From the balcony with a coconut tree growing through the middle we could see that the lagoon looked lovely despite the downpour and grey skies. ‘If it is this blue now,’ I thought, ‘imagine what it will be like in the sunshine.’

During a break in the rain we foolishly tried to walk down the road to a café,which according to the map looked just round the corner. It wasn’t just round the corner and of course the heavens opened even further giving us a proper soaking. We turned and trudged back down the road, getting wetter by the second and went to the fish & chip place, Puffy’s, next door to our accommodation. Fish & chips and a beer were extremely satisfying.

The rain continued throughout the night. Occasionally it would lessen, almost to nothing, only to become a furious torrent again. It finally sputtered out at about 05:00 to be replaced by a wind which whipped the coconut fronds back and forward. Breakfast was a tray of tropical fruit slices, shaved coconut and toast and jam. I had to race a mynah bird to the tray on the doorstep. After breakfast we waited at reception for our round the island tour, including in our package. This consisted of an hour and a half slow drive around the island, with various spots of interest pointed out. Aitutaki is where ‘Survivor: Cook Islands’, yet another dumb ‘reality’ show, was filmed. We caught an episode of it in New Zealand, drawn by Cook Islands in the title. Like most programmes of it’s genre it was hideous. Our guide pointed out the motu (small islands on the reef) that were used by the programme. By this point breaks in the cloud had appeared and we were able to see the beautiful turquoise colours of the lagoon. In town we stopped at the ‘superstore’, which was the equivalent in size and range of products as a small corner shop in the UK. On arriving back at Paradise Cove little spits of rain were beginning again.

After lunch we had a short walk down the beach, before rain stopped play again. We didn’t get too far because I kept wading into the water to look at things. Right up to the waters edge were a phenomenal number of sea cucumbers laying on the sand. Schooling fish kept right to the shallows, sometimes leaping from the water when spooked by something. About a metre into the water were isolated corals, I could walk right up to them and still only be shin deep. Around these congregated several small colourful fish, as well as a couple of larger butterflyfish. Visibility was excellent, apart from the wind blowing the surface water about.

Our package came with a days free hire of a moped, so the next morning we grabbed one. Gemma had sorted out a Cook Islands drivers license a few days earlier in Rarotonga, so she was fully legal to ride it, despite them spelling her surname LOMGMAN. It was a little bit shaky to begin with while Gemma got used to it and I clung on for dear life. In a short time though, we were motoring along happily, criss crossing the island and roaming across all of it’s roads. The weather was mostly kind to us, a little bit of cloud, which was appreciated as it held the sun in check, and then a bit of a shower in the late afternoon. We’d had quite a full day exploring so were ready to hand the bike back by that point.

Our dinner consisted of half a coconut cake each because we weren’t too hungry after a big lunch. We’d noticed a bar near to our accommodation, called Crusher Bar. The Lonely Planet said it was a good spot so we thought we’d wander down for a drink. It seems that the bar has undergone two changes of ownership since the glowing review in our guidebook. One had run the bar into the ground until it was taken over two weeks prior to our visit by the current owners who had plans to get it back on its feet as a raging local hangout. It wasn’t exactly raging when we turned up. The owners were sitting round a table with some mates and invited us to join them. Since we were the only other people in the bar it would have been rude not to. At first it was a little bit uncomfortable and I’m sure, had the bar had any doors, that they would have been swinging in the wind when we first turned up (a la western saloons). One of the aforementioned mates of the owners was a Cook Islands legend, Don Silk. Along with his business partner he was sailing to Canada from New Zealand, but missed and ended up in the Cook Islands. He has been there since the 1950’s. He regaled us with tales from his life, and chatted to us for a while being specially amused that I had read about him in the tourist newspaper. He has a biography out, Kauri Trees to Shining Seas, which we didn’t buy and instantly regretted.

We continued chatting with everyone and having a few beers, promising to tell everyone we knew that Crusher Bar is a really nice place where you can have a good old yarn and a drink with the locals. So there you go, I’ve said it now.

We were up early and at reception waiting to be picked up for a lagoon cruise with Bishops Cruises. We needn’t have bothered being early as Bishops work on island time like most other people in the Cooks. The weather was a little cloudy and windy, but happily devoid of rain. The cruise was lovely. Auitutaki is famous for it’s huge triangular lagoon dotted with motu. The blue sea rushed past as we cruised through the lagoon to our first stop, a set of coral heads where we could get some snorkelling done. Although the wind was causing some choppiness and a fairly strong current was running the snorkelling was excellent. The coral wasn’t brilliant, but it managed to support a large array of fish both small and large as well as housing a couple of giant clams. Jumping off the platform at the back of the boat I found myself right in the middle of a large school of butterflyfish. Gemma didn’t have her customary mask problems so we were able to get right on with swimming past the coral heads and letting the current push us back on the other side.

Back on the boat we made for our lunch stop, Tapuaetai or One Footprint Island (or One Foot Island). While the crew got lunch together Gemma and I walked round the tiny island, marvelling at the colour of the lagoon. Lunch was great, salads and fish barbecue, I couldn’t resist seconds. The island is in the middle of a pattern of sandbars and so it is possible to walk way out into the lagoon and still only be ankle deep. So that is what we did before returning to get a One Footprint Island stamp in our passports (cheesy, I know) and send some postcards to get the special postmark (which I suspect is the same stamp as in the passports.)

At our final stop, Aikaiami island, the captain pointed out the islands used in the filming of Survivor: Cook Islands. The island we were on was used to house the contestants that had been voted out of the show. Since they got free accommodation, food and unlimited activities it wasn’t a bad deal at all. We didn’t have very long on the island so Gemma and I just sat on a bench and played with a hermit crab.

The package we were on also included an ‘island night’. Island nights are big in the Cook Islands and many of the resorts and restaurants have one on during the week. The nights are a big buffet dinner followed by traditional music and dancing. You may think it is strictly for the tourists but that isn’t the case. The nights are popular with the locals as a way to keep their culture alive. So music and dancing have survived the changes imposed by the missionaries whereas some traditions have been lost. Like eating your defeated enemies. Not something I would have particularly wanted to see. We went along to Puffy’s next door to us along with an English and an Austrian couple also staying at Paradise Cove. There was masses of food, some of which was unidentifiable. There was a banana pudding which looked like chunks of raw liver. Needless to say I didn’t try that one. What I did eat was excellent. After the meal drumming started up that was almost samba-like and the dancers came out. All ages were represented, with some of the younger ones looking like they were being forced to do it against their wishes. Most seemed to be enjoying it though. I can only think that in times gone by, and maybe even now, the dances must have had some kind of sexual partner picking function. It surprised me that the missionaries didn’t ban the ladies from dancing, the sinuous and sensual twisting of the hips being positively erotic. It wasn’t so nice when a group of the men came out dressed as girls and dancing the ladies dance to much hilarity. If my eyes had been popping out on stalks at the girls, they went firmly back in their sockets when they came on. I did get a kiss from one of them when he danced up to me though! A selection of locals and tourists were grabbed by the dancers, including the Austrian girl we were sitting with, for the final dance. The tourists gave a good effort, but were no match for the locals.

The night before the guys at Crusher Bar had told us that Friday night was the jumping local party night, with a DJ and really kicking off at 10:30. Shortly after that time the six of us walked up to the bar, noticing with approval the amount of cars and mopeds parked outside. The DJ was indeed playing, although very much in the R&B style, and most people in the bar were hanging about in clusters looking moody. Given the amount of vehicles outside and the lack of people inside, each person must have driven three vehicles to get there. We got beers and stood in a circle. The Austrians and the English couple began jigging although I couldn’t really motivate myself to do more than sup at my lager. The jigging worked some magic however, and soon the dancefloor was full of twisting and turning locals. About a minute before midnight the DJ made an incomprehensible announcement and then promptly on the stroke of midnight turned everything off and packed up. The shutters on the bar went down at that precise moment. I gather licensing laws on the island are very strict. The Austrians were stunned, they couldn’t believe that the locals once a week party lasts for, basically, an hour.

Kia Orana

2006-11-14T21:36:00.000Z

Our flight from Nadi to Rarotonga was late afternoon, but because we crossed the date line we arrived on the evening before we left. This threw us slightly. At Nadi airport I thought for a moment we were going to be charged again for revalidating our tickets, but then the woman said we didn’t need to and just directed us to check-in. Air New Zealand still haven’t answered my complaint e-mail about the way we were dealt with in Auckland. The Lonely Planet mentioned a departure tax which confused us because, despite signs up in Nadi airport we couldn’t find where to pay it. It seems they include it with the ticket now, which seems much more sensible (take note New Zealand).

The pacific islands like to welcome you to their airports, this time a single bloke playing a guitar and singing as we queued for immigration. Our immigration officer must have not done his dourness training yet as he seemed reasonably jolly, although he did purse his lips a bit when he saw the original date on our onward ticket. I explained that we’d had them changed and they needed to be revalidated. He didn’t look convinced but stamped our passports and waved us through anyhow. After baggage collection and customs, where Gemma had to show some plant based souvenirs that she’d bought to an officer, we found the desk of Rarotonga Backpackers. We’d pre-arranged our accommodation by e-mail and joined a gang of others. There were quite a few of us and only a small minibus such that we ended up rammed in, with people sitting on each others knees and with their legs over the luggage. Thankfully the road that circles Rarotonga is only 34km around so we knew that it wouldn’t take too long to reach our destination. The hostel has two locations, one on the beach and another nearby on the hillside. We were booked into a bungalow at the hillside. They are pretty laidback in these parts, so just showed us to our room and told us to sort out the checking in formalities the next day.

Despite the cock-a-doodle-do’s starting up early in the morning I still didn’t drag myself out of bed until gone 10:00. The check in formalities were dispatched quickly and we set off to have a quick look at the surrounding area. Just down the hill and over the road is the beach and the thin strip of shallow lagoon protected by the reef which runs right around the island. We hopped on a bus into town. The bus service couldn’t be any less confusing, two services, clockwise and anti-clockwise with a single price for a journey. No route numbers, fare stages or changing buses.

We browsed the market which was being packed up. Cursing our tardiness we sat down for a nice lunch at a seafood place called Trader Jack’s. After lunch we made a mad dash to the supermarket and bottle shop. We’d been told the supermarket closed early on Saturdays and wasn’t open on Sundays. No alcohol is sold on Sundays either, so we had to make sure we were prepared! We were kind of blown away by the prices in the supermarket (2 litres of milk -$7.20), but reminded ourselves that we were on an isolated island where everything has to be shipped in. We spent the rest of the day just reading on our balcony and looking at the elusive thin wedge of blue ocean horizon that we could just about see through the coconut and papaya trees.

In the morning we hiked up the Raemaru track, or halfway at least. The track is hewn roughly into the bush up the hill and was fairly hard going at the start. There were some gorgeous views out over the island, the contrast between the deep blue of the open ocean and the lighter turquoise of the lagoon being particularly striking. Following a fairly distinct pattern, the rest of the day was spent reading on the balcony. There is a certain laziness that seems to pervade the pacific islands and we succumbed to it rather easily.

People partying by the pool into the early hours kept me awake and I had to resort to earplugs to finally get some sleep. That notwithstanding, we were up and out quite early the next morning and into town on a fact finding mission. In the afternoon we made our way over to the beautiful Muri beach for a bit of a look. Because we knew our check out from Rarotonga Backpackers was imminent we were looking to book somewhere to stay over there. A trudge around places was unsuccessful, they were either full, too expensive, or in the case of the backpackers over there had closed offices. We gave up and returned not having sorted anything out.

Bula Time

2006-11-13T23:21:00.000Z

It took us a while to decide where to go after our time at the Westin. 300 islands make up Fiji so we wanted to at least see one of those. A cruise looked the best option to do this, but the ones we looked at were too expensive. In the end we swallowed our pride and bought one of the packages offered by Awesome Adventures to the group of islands, near to mainland. The Yasawas and the Mananucas.

The fact that it was called Awesome Adventures and that it was aimed at backpackers made us shudder and we had visions of “wacky” non stop party backpackers. In the end we were glad we chose it. Our worst fears were not confirmed and we had a lovely time. We opted for the “lazy threesome” where you go to three islands. It is pot luck which ones you are assigned to, but we were happy with ours.

The first one was Tavewa which is at the top of the Yasawa islands and so a four hour boat ride, after which we travelled back down staying at 2 more islands. The journey was gorgeous, travelling past island after island ringed with white sand and palm trees, gorgeous blue sea. Views you see in brochures, but this time reality actually lived up to the brochure pictures.

All the islands we stayed on had different characters. I think the staff at the first, Coral View, made that one. They were so genuinely affectionate and made us feel so welcome. Even though we were only there for 2 days we felt that they were genuinely sad to see us go and we had big hugs from some of them. At each island we were welcomed with the Bula song; serenaded off the beach as we arrived. We were sung a farewell song as well. At Coral View we made friends with a couple, Elaine and Dave. Elaine was quite emotional when they sung it with such feeling. This of course set me off!

The atmosphere at Coral View was lovely too. We couldn't help getting into the spirit of the island and I blame this for the fact that we ended up cross dressing! Every night they had an activity and this one advertised itself as “make your fun dream come true tonight in Fiji!”. Tim had already made his fun dream come true back home, but he still participated wearing my clothes and I wore his! Look out for those pictures and there will probably be a video circulating the net at some point! Everyone put in the effort. We had to dance down a catwalk and be asked questions at the end of it. I'd never make a stand-up comedian but I think our dancing made up for that!

The island was beautiful and I couldn't get over how many different shades of blue the water was. The only thing was it was quite windy and so not ideal for snorkelling. It didn't matter though. We spent a lot of time wiling away the hours in a hammock. We also visited a traditional village. It was a bit uncomfortable at times. We went into the Chief's bure and sat around in a circle waiting for him. When he arrived we shook his hand and were invited to ask questions starting at the beginning of the circle so you knew that soon your time would be. When I've worked doing group work this is called the creeping death and is advised against as it makes everyone feel nervous. You could see the beads of sweat forming on everyones head as they furtively tried to think of a question before it was their turn. I asked something about the artwork in his bure and he made me repeat the question about 4 times!

After an emotional farewell to Elaine and Dave (we were meeting up with them the next day on the next island but maybe the farewell song had got to us a bit too much) we travelled to Naviti island. Again we were welcomed with the Bula song. The accommodation here was a bit more upmarket with a verandah on our hut and ensuite as opposed to outdoor salt water showers on the previous island (which was quite nice though as you could watch the sea as you showered). We watched a lovely sunset from the hammock on the first night.

The staff here didn't have the same spark as Coral View but they were still lovely (until they made us get up and dance to the Bula song and made us dance a silly one with random people!)

The resort offered snorkelling with Manta Rays which Tim and I fancied. In the boat we saw a fairly big bird hovering over the sea and the crew shouted, “there they are”.(The birds go after the fish which the Manta Rays are chasing) We looked to where they were pointing and saw a few dark manta ray shapes in the sea and hurried to get our snorkelling gear on. I plopped in the water as graceful as ever (not) which caused my mask to shift and water get in. The next few minutes saw me spluttering and thrashing around in the water trying to sort my mask out. I was feeling more and more manic and frustrated because the crew were shouting to tell us where the Rays were, “over there, swim there. Quick quick. No swim the other way. No no. Get out of the current.” I felt like going back to the boat and turfing them in. As I thrashed around I heard a big splash. I felt a bit jumpy at this point as I was stressing about my situation and I didn't feel in control. I looked around and saw that the bird we saw earlier had dived right in front of me which was quite cool. All I succeeded in doing was swallowing loads of sea water. I hadn't even got my head under when the crew shouted to come back to the boat. It was so frustrating especially when everyone said they saw some. I fixed my snorkel and the next time we went in I calmed my mind down and decided to be calm when they were shouting and not panic. I managed to jump in gently and my mask stayed on. The visibility wasn't great and the sea wasn't the calmest, but I saw one big manta ray underneath me which was lovely. However, it looked like it was coming for me and although I knew they don't hurt I didn't want it too close. I like to keep my distance from sea life which is why I don't want to learn to dive. I popped my head up. When I went back down though it had gone and I didn't see anymore. I struggled against the current to get to the people in time who were with some other rays. Back on the boat and everyone was swapping stories of how 5 or 6 were doing dance formations round them and I sat and smiled through gritted teeth. It felt reminiscent of Borneo when everyone saw a turtle except us. At least Tim got to see lots of rays though. I did see loads from the boat though and that was very good, especially when an absolutely massive one went past. Tim told me he had heard me when I asked him for help but he chose the mantas! Can't blame him really. Thrashing, spluttering me or beautiful, graceful creatures of the sea. Hmm I know which I'd chose!

That evening after the arrival of Dave and Elaine, catching up on the 24 hours we'd been apart and after more silly dancing, we were invited to drink Kava by one of blokes who worked there with the locals. Elaine declined as she was really tired but Tim, Dave and I trudged off feeling slightly edgy as it all felt slightly shady. We felt we had to do it though. Kava is drunk every night by Fijian people. It is the crushed up root of a plant which looks a bit like ginger. We arrived at a thatched bure where lots of locals were all seated around a bowl with something which resembled thin cement slurry. ummmm, cement slurry. A man dished up the Kava in a small bowl to each of us in turn and everyone clapped rhythmically and randomly and said “bula” (this word is used for many things) In turn we downed the foul looking liquid. People had said it was really awful, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was quite hot and gritty, but didn't taste so bad. After I downed it I followed suit to everyone else and said, “Bula Bula”. Not sure why, but hey! I'm sure I just said “hello, hello” I looked around as I waited for some effect. I wanted to laugh at Dave and Tim as they looked like rabbits caught in headlights. Their eyes were looking quite big and round, or it could have been the effect of the dim lighting. A lot of people were just sitting slumped. I think they'd had quite a lot. It was quite quiet until Dave brought out his magic tricks, something which we saw frequently in the few days we were with him and which was great for breaking cross cultural barriers. The kava group were impressed. After this Tim and Dave had more Kava (I declined) and I took lots of photos of people on their request which I have to send to them.

We left the bure and I felt quite wired. It's supposed to be narcotic and therefore you should be able to sleep well. Apparently Dave did, but me and Tim struggled!

The following day we all headed to Honeymoon beach, a short walk up a hill, through forest and a small settlement later we were at a beautiful secluded white sandy beach. I immediately jumped into the clear blue inviting water after which we walked up the beach and were fascinated to see hundreds of hermit crabs all marching in the same direction away from the sea. We heard them before we saw them, clicking away.

Back at Korovou and after lunch we said goodbye to Elaine and Dave, this time for longer than 24 hours as we leave for the Cook Islands and they go to the New York. We boarded the boat for our final destination on that trip, Bounty Island. I had to sit inside and felt unable to leave my seat feeling a bit iffy. Must've been something I ate! Arriving at Bounty Island, it looked lovely (as they all have) Again we were greeted with the Bula song. All our accommodation had been overlooking the beach and sea but this one was right on the sand. The sea looked really inviting, but we went and sat on the end of the jetty with a drink and watched the sun go down. We were pleased when we spotted a stingray swim under us.

We watched the welcome singing that night which was probably the best yet with about 20 people singing really soulfully. It was really lovely. My mum would have been in bits!

Up early the next day to make the most of our only day on the island. We walked right round it which took, all of half an hour. Again, beautiful white sand, clear blue sea, islands dotted in the distance. We had hoped to see a turtle or two as we had heard that the island has nesting turtles on it. Not to be. Turtles are eluding us this trip.

We spent some time snorkelling which was probably the best off the beach snorkelling we've done. There was lovely colourful soft coral and lots of really beautiful brightly coloured big fish. I was glad to get my snorkelling head on again. The rest of the day we spent reading in the shade. It was just too hot to do anything else.

The time we've spent in Fiji has been such hard work and I hope nobody feels too sorry for us. Fiji is beautiful and I would definitely go back. From the moment you step off the plane and you are serenaded by fijian people it is hard not to get into the spirit of it. There are so many different islands to visit and we didn't even explore the mainland which is apparently in contrast to the beaches, with highlands and rainforest. Next stop The Cook Islands. hOh how will we cope with more beautiful beaches and island life?

Mamanuca and Yasawa Islands

2006-11-10T23:18:00.002Z

As the nation of Fiji is composed of many small islands, we decided we ought to see some of them. We originally looked at Captain Cook Cruises and Blue Lagoon Cruises, both live-aboard small cruise ships that ply a more or less fixed route through the Mamanuca and Yasawa island groups. These cruises were a bit out of our price range, so we were forced to look at alternatives. A company called Awesome Adventures Fiji markets itself to the backpacker market. I’ve already mentioned that I cringe at such things, but since a five night trip with them was the same price as the least expensive two night cruise with the others I gritted my teeth and booked a trip. We chose the Lazy Threesome trip, five nights spread over two islands in the Yasawas and one in the Mamanucas, starting with the northern Yasawas (or the possibility of two islands and two nights on their own live-aboard cruiser). The company is deliberately vague in the brochure and you don’t find out exactly which islands or resorts that you are staying at until you pick up your tickets. I imagine this is so they can spread people out amongst the resorts, as well as picking the ones that cost them less.

We got picked up early in the morning from the Skylodge along with a few other people. We got speaking to a Welsh couple who were doing the same trip as us but interspersed with some extra days. Happily at the jetty we discovered that they had been assigned the same resorts as us. As we were headed first to Tavewa island at the extreme northern end of the Yasawa chain we had a four hour boat ride ahead of us. The ride was lovely cutting through beautiful calm blue seas, stopping off at the island, some of them tiny, along the way. After Naviti island the wind picked up and the water became a bit more choppy. Along the way we spoke to the Welsh couple, Dave and Elaine, and got on really well.

Eventually we transferred from the ferry onto a very rickety boat to transfer to Coral View Resort. A mild soaking later and we were on the beach and being welcomed by all the staff. The resort was a fairly basic, rustic place with traditional bures, basically thatched huts. The dining and entertainment room was cool, built straight on the beach with a sand floor. The staff were excellent, all very friendly and leaving a real sense that they cared about you. Joe, the guy in charge, apologised profusely on our first night because they were unable to do their normal welcome song.

Our time on the island was spent pretty much lounging in hammocks and reading, although we did take one excursion. The resort runs various boat trips, including one to the Blue Lagoon from the Brooke Shields film. We took one to the village on a nearby island. To be honest it was the only disappointment that we had on the island. On the trip out a tiny flying fish jumped into the boat. On the island itself we were marched in through the village, sat in the chiefs bure and waited for him to arrive. When he did we all shook hands with him and got to ask a question, going round the circle. There was no pre-amble and no explanations other than to the questions we asked. We later heard from other people that had done village visits on other islands that they had been given a really good and informative tour. Ours seemed purely a way of getting us to buy stuff from the ladies of the village, who assembled selling necklaces, sulus (sarongs) and various other trinkets.

On the second evening the whole staff formed to give us our belated welcome song. It was really quite nice, the whole staff singing together. Afterwards they held a cross dressing night, which everyone got into, some more enthusiastically than others. Sticking a bra over a football top just doesn’t cut it in my book. It was pretty funny and I think everyone had a good time. After lunch the Yasawa Flyer arrived again and we made our way southward again. At lunch the staff sang the farewell song which had Gemma and Elaine in tears. Elaine and Dave were staying an extra night at Coral View before joining us at the next island, but we said goodbye like we’d known them for years and wouldn’t be seeing them again.

The journey down to Naviti took only an hour or so. We boarded the little boat bound for Korovou Eco Tour Resort and booked in. The excitement of the previous evenings transvestite shenanigans had worn me out. I tried, in a blind panic, to escape the dancing after dinner. I failed. I think I managed about ten minutes of conversation afterwards before dragging myself off to bed. The accommodation at Korovou was a step up from Coral View, en suite bathrooms, with freshwater (albeit cold) as opposed to outdoor mixed fresh/saltwater at Coral View. Both resorts had a completely different character.

We awoke refreshed in the morning and after breakfast took a snorkelling trip to see manta rays. The presence of the mantas is seasonal, and they should have gone by now, but luckily they are still there. A short boat ride round the island and we were all in the water. The guy piloting the boat was spotting the mantas by looking for birds ahead of them. They chase fish to the surface, which the birds then dive in for, so the birds are a very good indicator. There was a lot of confused splashing around trying to follow the guy on the boat’s instructions to get out of the current and wait for the manta rays. Some people were splashing toward them rather too much which spooked them a bit. Gemma was calling out for me as her snorkel wasn’t on properly and all she was managing to do was swallow a lot of seawater. I had a decision to make, swim back and help Gemma, possibly missing the manta rays, or crack on looking for them. I selfishly chose the latter and was rewarded with a good view of a couple of rays, one massive one swimming right underneath me.

We got back in the boat and moved to another spot, this time with people having been briefed to calm down in the water and also with Gemma’s kit having been tweaked. She did manage to see a manta ray this second time. I think I saw about five or six, in one place three were doing a sort of looping dance with one another, just gently spinning through the water in a somersault motion. Manta rays are absolutely majestic creatures, effortlessly gliding through the water in currents that I had to really struggle against. We also got some good views of them from in the boat on the way back.

In the afternoon we were on the deck as the band played the Bula song and Dave and Elaine arrived from the Yasawa Flyer. We spent the rest of the day with them drinking and chatting. Late in the evening I mentioned to the main host, Moses, that I hadn’t yet tried kava. This got us an invite to the bure at the end of the beach were his uncle, and most of the island’s locals were drinking it. Kava is a drink made from a powdered root, and has a mild narcotic effect and reputedly reduces anxiety. Dave, Gemma and I went along while Elaine bowed out. It seemed a little shady at first, but was fine once we were in there. As we drank half coconut shells filled with the liquid, that tastes and looks like dishwater, Dave pulled out his magic tricks and proceeded to wow everyone (as he had done every night previously). I vowed to learn a couple of tricks, as they are instant cross-cultural ice breakers. The locals continued as we bowed out and went back home. Despite kava’s reputation as inducing sleep, both Gemma and I had a terrible nights sleep.

After breakfast and checking out of our rooms Gemma, Dave, Elaine and I walked over the hill to Honeymoon Beach. A path cuts through the trees and up a steep hill, then down the other side through a small settlement with a couple of houses and fairly extensive fruit and vegetable gardens. The beach is private with a donation box, so we dropped in a few dollars on the way through. We were the only ones on the beach, a wide stretch of sand with beautiful clear water lapping against it. Walking along the beach toward the rocks at the end we saw hundreds of hermit crabs plodding up the beach. I love hermit crabs, so I was very impressed to see so many of all sizes marching their way toward the trees.

After lunch and a couple of beers the Yasawa Flyer appeared on the horizon and another farewell song started up. We said goodbye to Dave and Elaine, promising to visit them in Wales sometime. Our next stop was Bounty Island in the Mamanucas, named after the HMS Bounty of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame (The crew of the Bounty were the first Europeans to sight Fiji). The island is also famous for being the location of Celebrity Love Island, although that one rather passed me by. It was quite a long ride to the island and I spent a good portion of it on the front of the boat watching the sparkling water rush past as we stopped at various islands along the way. At one island hundreds of fruit bats were circling the treetops.

In the launch on the way to Bounty I developed, perhaps irrationally, an utter and overriding hatred of three English girls who were also on the boat. They were vacant, painfully skinny, wearing stupid giant sunglasses and clutching designer handbags. It took 10 minutes for them to move their emaciated frames up the boat when requested to. I think they may have been malnourished and therefore not fully alert. Just the mere sight of them brought out a murderous rage in me. On approach to the island they were in a flap trying to identify features that they’d seen on Celebrity Love Island, and failing miserably because it was filmed on the other side of the island.

Once again the character of the resort was completely different, as well as the accommodation. This time we had a fridge, air conditioning and hot shower! I don’t think the staff were as friendly as the other resorts we’d been to, although their welcome and farewell songs may have been the best. Before dinner we sat on the jetty and just watched the water for a while. A small stingray swam up and round the jetty posts. The food at Bounty was excellent. I didn’t stay out too long after the singing finished and got an early night.

In the morning we took a nice walk around the island, which only took half an hour. Aside from the resort and some buildings that I guessed were from Celebrity Love Island, there wasn’t anything except beach, trees, shells and birds. Lovely. After the walk we moved our bags from the room and went snorkelling from the beach. They have quite a nice range of corals just off the beach and a stunning range of fish species. We spent a little while in the water just drifting from one patch of reef to another marvelling at the colour of the fish. The rest of the day was spent just lazing in hammocks and on benches until it was time to be picked up by the boat and ferried back to Port Denarau, and from there back to Skylodge. We didn’t get an upgraded room this time, but weren’t really bothered. The room we did get was fine, the only discernible differences being that the ‘lesser’ room was slightly smaller and had no towels.

And so ended our time in Fiji. It was a completely relaxing time for us and almost like a holiday within a holiday. Having both luxury and more basic accommodation was nice. I enjoyed both. I probably say this about everywhere we’ve been, but I would definitely go back to Fiji. The people are lovely, the islands are perfect little idyllic paradises and the marine life is amazing.

Bula

2006-11-10T23:18:00.001Z

The plane ride to Fiji was mercifully short, especially given that we were sat next to a young family with a kid that screamed most of the way. I resolved to book myself into the vasectomy clinic as soon as we return to the UK. We had exit seats but, perhaps fortunately, I wasn’t called on to demonstrate my door opening skills. The immigration officers in Fiji had all paid attention to lessons at the international school for stern-looking officials, it was slightly surreal being looked up and down with the jolly strains of a band in the background.

We’d pre-booked at Nomads Skylodge, a backpacker place near the airport. Normally anything with the word backpacker associated with it gives me the shivers but this place wasn’t bad at all. If I had to guess I’d say it was a resort that was finding it hard to compete with the better located and more up to date places, so reinvented itself and began targeting the budget market. The service was excellent and we got upgraded to a better room so we definitely weren’t complaining. The ride from the airport was enlivened enormously by a crazy honeymooning dutchman, who was whacked up on painkillers and aeroplane wine. He seemed much more subdued the next morning at breakfast. With his wife he was visiting 6 countries in just over a fortnight!

Our stay at the Skylodge was a limited one. In the morning we took a cab to the Westin on Denarau island. The Westin is one of three Sheraton owned hotels in the same complex on the island, and the poshest of them. We don’t normally go for such budget-blowing luxury, but we had decided to treat ourselves for Gemma’s birthday. Being the scruffy looking oiks that we are, we attracted some odd looks when we arrived at the hotel, spurning offers of help from the porters. The room was lovely and we very quickly made ourselves at home, using the specially designed shower and loafing around in bathrobes and slippers. Gemma sat on the bed and opened the cards that we’d picked up from Christchurch.

The first day was spent just chilling out, walking round the resort and generally being lazy. As evening draws in the hotel has a fire-lighting ceremony where drums are banged, flaming sticks are twirled and large braziers in the pool are lit up. Gemma had to ring her Mum to be wished happy birthday, so after a couple of drinks we went back to the room and she did so. By the time we got off the phone we were both pretty hungry so we made for the nearest restaurant, The Steakhouse & Grill. Again treating ourselves, we had a nice meal. Gemma had a shock when she saw that the wine had cost as much as the food, but when I related the whole thing to being less than the cost of a night out at home she calmed down. The wine was very nice.

Breakfast was a quiet affair with my hangover beginning nice and early. I tried to be healthy by sticking to fruit and yoghurt, but failed when I saw the croissants. The hotel had many activities organised, but active wasn’t how I was feeling at that point so I sat by the pool with a book, occasionally jumping in to cool off a bit. We ate lunch in one of the restaurants at the adjoining Sheraton Fiji resort. The exertion of this was such that we immediately had to have a bit of a nap. Our bed was so comfy and inviting that I had trouble tearing myself away from it, I had visions of being stuck there forever. The mattress was thicker than my head. That evening we watched the fire-lighting ceremony again having a couple of beers. Neither of us felt hungry at all so we didn’t bother with dinner.

In the morning after breakfast we jumped on the first boat across to Akuilau Island. The resort owns the island just over a small stretch of water from the beach and runs an hourly shuttle boat over to it. We took a quiet walk along the beach, peering in pools at the wealth of crawling, swimming, wriggling and squirming life in there. Lizards and crabs dashed around on the rock as we approached them. I found a couple of hermit crabs that were either mating or fighting. It was hard to tell. Back in the main grassy part we met a man who lives and works on the island. He led us on a path through the trees to a small chair and plucked us fresh papaya and coconut.

Back at Denarau we jumped straight in the pool for a bit of a cooling dip and then lazed around for an hour or so, occasionally looking up to order a cocktail or something to nibble on. The highlight that evening was the crab racing. An auction was held at the start for various crabs named for sports personalities from various countries. We bid for and won, for $27, the Fijian crab, named after a golfer I think. I think Gemma enjoyed the excitement of the bidding, although it was very restrained compared to that which happened for the Canadian entry, with a couple of Canadians bidding madly against each other. David Beckham crab was also a hit, going for about $120. All the contestants were sold and a bucket produced full of hermit crabs with numbers on their shells. This was dumped rather unceremoniously on a mat with the aim of seeing which crab made it off the mat first. I have an inkling that our crab was over the line first, but in the end it was fudged up so the kids that bid won. Fair enough, although what would they do with a cocktail (the prize)?

Another day of lazing by the pool started with the fish feeding. I’d seen this on the activities board and was quite looking forward to it, so was dismayed when a guy came up shouting, ‘Fish feeding, feeding of the fish.’ to then throw a loaf of bread in the water and walk off. The fish seemed to like it though, the bread pieces jumping around on the water and disappearing chunk by chunk. In the evening we were treated to a magnificent sunset as we walked along the beach to the Sheraton. We had dinner at that resort before walking back with Gemma nearly dying of fright at nearly stepping on frogs and having fruit bats fly out of the trees next to her. They grow the bats big in this part of the world.

The luxury was over with the next morning, although we waited until just about the last moment to check out. We caught a cab up to the Skylodge, where we had stayed when we arrived to sort out our remaining time in Fiji. When we arrived, I thought again, that the place wasn’t bad for the money, especially as we’d been upgraded to a better room again. Our taxi driver had been mercilessly touting for the business of taking us touring around the main island of Fiji, we put him off by taking his card. Instead we sat around the pool again, soaking up the heat and reading. Very relaxing, despite the surroundings being a bit less luxurious that we’d become used to over the previous few days.

Slumming it

2006-11-10T23:18:00.000Z

I turned 28 (Thank you everyone for your cards) in Fiji and it couldn't have been a better place to soothe the shock of it! As a birthday treat we booked into the Westin. I'm not proud I'll stay anywhere, but this was absolutely awful. The room was luxurious with a mattress and double shower head specially designed for the Westin. It was tastefully furnished and had a lovely bathroom. I know it sounds awful and you are probably wondering how I could have spent four days there mainly relaxing by the pool with cocktails, umm relaxing, swimming, eating, putting up with the room, wearing the dressing gown, (even though it was too hot for it I made sure I wore it).swimming, relaxing. I think you get the picture.

The Westin was on a resort of two other hotels and you can use all their facilities too. There was a beach in front of one of these but not much of one in front of ours. However, our hotel owns a little island about 10 minutes boat ride away which you can go to when you want. We spent a few hours over there, being the only ones on it except for the family which live there. A member of this family picked us a coconut and Papaya and it was all very idyllic.

Each night the hotel had an unwind ritual which consisted of hunky Fijian men banging a drum and fire dancing as the sun went down. At about this time, the bats would come out and I would occasionally shriek when I thought one was coming for my head. These bats were absolutely massive. About the size of chickens so I think I should be forgiven for being a pansy.

The four days was very resorty, but we enjoyed it. It was a step away from the norm and we enjoyed living it up for a while, although we felt four days was probably the right amount of time. Believe it or not there are only so many times you can watch hunky men dance with fire. We didn't see much of Fiji whilst at the hotel, but that was our next assignment.

Goodbye Campervan

2006-11-10T23:17:00.000Z

We've said goodbye to our van now. Despite it being slightly shabbier (added to previously mentioned faults the holder for the table leg snapped because of metal fatigue and left a hole in the floor), I was still sad to leave our mobile home behind.

Our last day in the van was spent West of Auckland. My initial reservations of Auckland melting away when I saw the beautiful coast line and the Waitakere ranges, a lovely wilderness area, all within about an hour of Auckland city. The day was spent pootling around exploring the coast thick with beautiful trees and bush. We went to Piha a beautiful place with houses sat in the bush covered hill overlooking the beach with Lion rock, a massive beautiful rocky outcrop. Next beach was Te Henga beach where we joined the locals and surfers at the little coffee van before walking along the black sand beach (product of volcanic history). We camped at at the van park next to the last beach, Muriwai, another black sand beach where we had a lovely walk up to the Gannet colony. Hundreds of gannets were perched on the rocky outcrops which help to make the coast so pretty. The fisherman stood on the rocks below looked dwarfed by the immensity of the sea and the rocks. Waves were crashing against the rocks and one Fisherman looked like he was defying the elements by rooting himself, fishing rod in hand, to the spot.

A bottle of wine bought at a winery (as is the theme of our time in NZ) was drunk to seal our last night in our van and the next day we returned Ezy.

Glow-worms, Whales and Vegetables

2006-11-03T10:23:00.000Z

In Waitomo we stayed in a van park, our site next to a field of entertaining cows. It was a welcome break from driving straight away the next morning when we only had to go across the road to get to where we wanted to go. This was the Waitomo caves. In the area there are about 300 caves. We chose to go on a tour which takes you to see Glow worms and another cave near by. It was a great trip, our guide on the way to the cave explaining the geology of the scenery which was very green, very hilly with (as is the way in lots of New Zealand) sheep around us. The area had a lot of limestone which means that millions of years ago, it was under the sea (limestone being rock made up of tiny crushed shells).

We arrived at the cave and adorned attractive hard hats with lights on before entering. Inside we saw Glow worms up close. They aren't worms but are the larvae of the fungus gnat which have luminescent organs. They weave sticky threads which hang down and which insects, attracted by the light get caught in. The Glow worm reels in the thread and eats the insect. After watching a few insects perish we moved on to an inflatable raft. This was the highlight. We moved down the river inside the cave and it was like sailing through a grotto with lots of fairy lights around. These lights were of course the Glow worms and as our eyes adjusted to night vision we saw more and more and they became brighter. It was strange to think that all these beautiful lights were something quite horrible really. Larvae of a gnat. It was very relaxing and quite hypnotic floating through the cave looking above and around and seeing all these beautiful lights. A girl next to me said 'it would be great if the sky at night was like this'. I thought, 'she obviously does not look up at the sky enough then', as what was above us could have been mistaken as the night sky with lots of constellations. It was even more amazing when the guide made a loud noise and they all shone brighter. I believe this happens because the larvae work with vibrations so they interpreted the loud noise as an insect nearby and therefore shone brighter to attract them.

Outside of the glow worm cave, blinded by the sunlight, some of the group fed the eels. After the eels had their feed we had ours (well a biccie and cuppa) before heading to the next cave. This was a lovely cave with some nice decorations, but the highlight of this cave for me were the extinct Moa bird's bones. Caves always provoke my imagination into thoughts of ancient times so to have an (estimated) 20,000 year old extinct bird in the cave added to that feeling. David Attenborough filmed a documentary at the Glow-worms caves which apparently was shown in UK in October 05 or March 06.

Out of the caves again and the tour ended when we arrived back in Waitomo village. We carried on the site- seeing on our own and visited a couple of natural attractions up the road a few kilometeres. The first one was a the Mangapohue natural bridge, a massive natural limestone bridge with a large stream running under it. My description does not do it justice. It was beautiful and again I was in awe that it was essentially made out of tiny shells. We walked to the other side of it through a field with some curious and some not so curious sheep and more scattered limestone, some with fossilised giant oysters in.

The next natural attraction was beautiful Marakopa falls which usually is in three tiers, but because of rainfall it was running as one; the result being a large, impressive waterfall.

From one stunning waterfall to another the next day we stopped at Bridal veil falls. Tim laughed at a comment I made in a broad Suffolk accent that they make them good in this part of New Zealand. That they do though. Bridal falls was a stunning, tall single stream waterfall gushing into a pool at the bottom.

After the falls we headed to Raglan for our daily coffee. Heading for our chosen cafe we were aware of a van creeping along by us. We stopped so he could pass us which he didn't. Instead he beckoned us over. I thought he was going to tell us off for walking out in front of him or something. I felt reluctant to do as he said, a bit like the shepherd incident previously, but in the end I did as I was told. I was glad I did as he told us that there were whales coming into the harbour. We rushed over and indeed there were several orcas (AKA killer whales) swimming in. We felt incredibly lucky to be seeing them, especially when a girl told us that she had lived there for 5 years and this was only her second time seeing them. (Apparently they appear about twice a year. ) I couldn't believe our luck. There were some kayakers in the harbour who probably couldn't believe theirs either. They were too far away for a decent picture, but seeing them emerge and hearing the blowing noise as they exhaled from their blowholes was fantastic. We followed them down the harbour a bit before deciding to get that coffee, after which we had another look at a couple of orcas which appeared to be in the same place as we had left them. I love it when things like that happen when you don't expect it. I had been missing a bit of wildlife whilst in NZ. That made up for it. Just in time too as we only had two days left.

From whales to gardens in the City of Hamilton. We had lunch and wandered round the large pretty gardens and played the guess the vegetable game. We can have fun doing anything!

The end of New Zealand

2006-11-03T10:21:00.001Z

Hamilton is only an hour and a half south of Auckland. As we still had a day left we went north into Auckland, but immediately swung across to the west coast. The North Island is very thin around Auckland, with the city sprawling from the east coast inwards. On the west side the Waitakere ranges are a forested mountainous area protected as a regional park. The drive through the park was lovely, native bush at both sides of the road and it was easy to forget that we were so close to the city. We stopped at the Arataki information centre to have a look from the viewpoint, a 360 degree panorama of Auckland and it’s surrounds.

The view of the coast which broke through the bush on the road to Piha was fantastic. A stunning blue sea with Lion Rock just off the beach. The beaches of this part of the west coast are covered in black sand, a remnant of past volcanic activity. The sand sparkles as sunlight reflects from minerals in it. This looks lovely, but the wet sand stuck to people doesn’t look so nice. The surfies were out in force taking advantage of the weekend sunshine.

There isn’t a road which hugs the coast, meaning that we had to double back on ourselves several times during the day. Our next stop was Te Henga, or Bethells Beach, another nice spot, where a little trailer based store does a cracking coffee. Again, the car park was full of people pulling out boards and heading onto the beach. We laughed at a dog racing across the beach to chase a kite.

We made a quick wine tasting stop at the Matua winery and took away a bottle for that evening. About 10km away was our final stop, another stretch of black sand at Muriwai Beach. We booked into the camp site, a lovely spaced out site with loads of interesting mature trees. Muriwai Beach is also the home of a colony of gannets. We took a walk up to the colony, where several lookout platforms sit above the gannets. Below us on the rocks a fisherman cast into the sea as waves washed over the ledge he was standing on. It all looked a little precarious.

In the morning we packed our stuff up into our bags and made our way into Auckland. We had already pre-booked a hotel near the Ezy depot, so checked straight in after dropping off the van. It was a wet Sunday afternoon when we ventured out in search of food. As we walked the rain got harder so, fearing a complete drenching, we bought bowl noodles and sandwiches from a corner shop and went back to our room.

The weather had abated the next day, so after check-out we put our luggage in storage and walked into Auckland centre. Neither of us were in the mood for it and so maybe did the place a disservice. It just seemed so similar to other cities and we felt a little disheartened. Perhaps we were sad because we had enjoyed our time in New Zealand so much, with all it’s natural splendour, and our last glimpse of it was a fairly ordinary, fairly busy city centre. At the airport we had to deal with a very snotty bloke on the Air New Zealand customer service desk who charged us $25 apiece to re-validate our tickets. We weren’t happy.

Hamilton

2006-11-03T10:21:00.000Z

The road north from Kawhia was unsealed for the first segment. Bad weather had caused rock and mud slides in places which meant the road would narrow to a thin wedge. The road passed through some lovely native bush. We hit a diversion almost as soon as the road became sealed. Following the diversion signs we managed to get to our first stop of the day, the Bridal Veil Falls. The falls were lovely, a single spout of water pouring out over the rock and into a large pool beneath.

The sealed road continued the rest of the way to Raglan a town well known for it’s surf breaks. We were just heading into the town when a man stopped his van and beckoned us over. He told us to walk round the corner to the harbour, which we duly did to be rewarded by the sight of several orcas surfacing in the harbour. Some people were out in kayaks with the killer whales gently breaking the surface only metres away from them. We followed a pair further into the harbour, where many people were gathering. A woman told us that they appear once or twice a year, so we felt extremely lucky to have seen them.

The largest town of the Waikato region is Hamilton and this was our next stop. We bypassed the centre of town and made straight for the Hamilton Gardens. The gardens are a large and pretty park with various themed areas. We took a walk around the lake, ate lunch at the café and spent some time browsing the herb and vegetable gardens. I think Gemma enjoyed my game of ‘what’s this vegetable?’

With plenty of time on our hands we decided to call it a day and book into a holiday park in Hamilton.

Glow in the dark

2006-11-03T10:20:00.000Z

There was a little confusion after we left Taupo. Because I was doing something and not watching the road we sailed past our turn off. This led to travelling up and back down two sides of a triangle totalling about 50km in length, when we should have just taken the third side at about 20km. It wasn’t such a big deal. The road passed mainly through pine forest until we got back to where we should be. We stopped for coffee in a small town (Benneydale I think). I should have been warned off by the fact that the coffee selection on the sign consisted of, ‘coffee’. I’m particularly fond of a well made flat white. This was burnt powdered coffee (not even granules) and almost undrinkable.

Coffee and navigational disasters aside, I was quite enjoying the trip. We were driving through hilly sheep grazing land. The grass was very green, and the sky very blue such that it looked like a photograph with the saturation bumped way up. At times it was almost painful to look at. Somewhere along the road some farmers were moving a mob of sheep across the road. One guy was out on the road motioning for Gemma to stop. She hadn’t seen the sheep and thought the situation looked dodgy, and so refused to slow down until the very last moment. I thought for a moment that she was going to flatten the poor farmer, and judging by the expression on his face so did he!

We arrived quite late in the village of Waitomo and checked into the van park there. In the evening we had pizza at the Morepork pizzeria across the road and then settled in for an exciting evening of watching the antics of the young bulls in the field next to us. It was better than most TV I’ve seen recently.

Waitomo is famous for the extensive cave systems in the area, the name meaning something like ‘Water Hole’ in Maori. The caves here are especially famed for their populations of glow-worms, which is what we’d come to see. Typically for New Zealand a lovely place has been ‘adventured’ up for tourists. I can imagine the tourist board meeting, ‘These caves are beautiful, the limestone eroded throughout the ages leaving huge underground caverns with rivers running through. In the darkness you look up to see an enchanting ceiling of lights that look almost like a galaxy of stars above you, a perfect tourist draw’

‘Naw, it’s missing something. I know, how about we jump down into the cave from a height then shoot down the rivers on an inner tube. Oh yeah, maybe we’ll look at the glow-worms too.’

In the morning when we went over to the museum-cum-visitor centre to get a ticket I told the lady that I didn’t want a tour with, ‘Jumping, falling, crashing or whizzing through the caves.’ Her response was, ‘But you want to white water raft down them, yeah?’. No! We managed to get her to tell us which were the sedate tours and then booked on the longer, the Spellbound tour. The advantages of which were that it was a small group tour away from the more busy caves, taking in two caves and which allowed photography.

We were glad we did that tour. Our guide was quite a character and vastly knowledgeable about caves, limestone, glow-worms and a lot more besides. After a drive out to the caves with a running commentary about the geology of the area we were given helmets with torches on them and led into the first cave. A river runs through the cave, bringing in the insects that are the food source of the glow-worms. The conditions in there are perfect to support a massive amount of glow-worms. Our guide explained the different life stages of the glow-worm, not actually a worm but the larval stage of a mosquito-like fly. On the roof of the cave we could clearly see the ‘worms’ and the sticky strands of silk that they use to trap their prey (and quite a few examples of the prey being munched upon.)

We all boarded a small inflatable raft and set out deeper into the cave. Our helmet torches were put out and after a somewhat fruitless attempt to get some photos of the glow-worms glowing on the cave roof (even a professional photographer in the group was having problems) we continued down the river. As our eyes grew accustomed to the dark the cave just began to light up in front of us. It truly was a spellbinding sight. Thousands of tiny specks of light glowing away in the darkness and looking like the stars on a beautiful clear night.

Outside we had a quick cuppa before entering another cave. This was without a river and had a built walkway and lighting throughout it. The cave had some interesting decorations, but nowhere near as many or such stunning shapes as other caves. It was still very interesting though, the guide explaining how animals got trapped in the cave. We could see the bony evidence of this, with goat and possum bones and even the skeleton of the extinct moa, a giant cousin of the kiwi. By the end we knew we’d made the right decision over which tour to take as we’d really enjoyed it.

Back in the van we headed out westwards along the Marokopa road. We stopped at a couple of stunning natural attractions. The first, Mangapohue Natural Bridge, is huge chunk of limestone that has eroded into the form of a giant arch. Gemma kept repeating, ‘So that is all made of tiny shells then?’ The second, Marokopa Falls is a large three tiered waterfall. The rain that had fallen over the preceding few days made the falls into a spectacular sight, vast volumes of water pouring over them.

We didn’t fancy staying in the tiny village of Marokopa so swung north and up to Kawhia. This small fishing village stands on the harbour of the same name, although when we arrived there wasn’t any water there, instead we saw a vast muddy flat plain. We stayed in the very small van park in Kawhia, with virtually no-one else around.

East Coast

2006-11-03T10:19:00.000Z

We didn’t get woken up by sheep in Morere, but they were bustling towards the van when I came back from the toilets in the morning. Maybe they were going to eat Gemma. They got spooked when they saw me and ran off. Our first port of call for the day was Gisborne, the major town of these parts. A quick coffee and use of the telephone and we were back on the road again, this time up the east coast. The road winds it’s way through pretty rolling hills, partly grazed and partly forested with both native and pine trees. At times the main road dips to the coast, affording lovely views of the bays. Mostly though the road stays inland. We did take a couple of short detours to get to the sea. These roads passed through small towns with tumbledown buildings. We couldn’t find many places to park up so our time there was quite limited. We covered a fair amount of ground, despite the road being as bad in places as the one from the previous day. Patches of unsealed road would suddenly appear with very little warning. Twice we had to pick all the cups and plates up after they came out of their holders.

At Te Araroa we stopped for the day in a camp ground set in a lovely garden near the beach. The camp ground has the world’s most easterly cinema -top that Lowestoft! Gemma was a little scared by the camp ground, it was a little bit local. There were several families who obviously lived in the park permanently. I would hate to go so far as to use the label trailer-trash, as it may be completely unfair, but there was a general impression.

Heading back westward the road was much better, with only a couple of random unsealed segments. This road also hugged the coastline for much of the way meaning we were treated to much more dramatic scenery. The waves battering the rocky shoreline and the gnarled and twisted trees made us think we were back on the South Island. The trees were Pohutukawa, only found in the northern part of the North Island, and very lovely. Again, as previously on the North Island, we were frustrated at the lack of proper stopping places so we couldn’t hop out and take photographs. Apparently a constantly smoking active volcano, White Island, should have been visible in the bay but I couldn’t see it. Gemma thought she could make it out though.

Gemma was up for a bit more driving, so after Opitiki we hooked back inland, pausing briefly in Rotarua for some lunch at the excellent Fat Dog Café. The food and the coffee were superb in there. I think Gemma particular liked the dog-based poetry adorning the walls, plates, toilets, everything else.

After lunch we continued to Taupo and De Bretts Thermal Resort again. The woman behind the counter looked surprised to see us back. It was pretty much on our route and a logical place to stop, and so stop we did. We both quite fancied a dip in the hot pools to soothe out the driving kinks from our shoulders. It was just as nice second time around, although there was some confusion at the start leading to the two of us sitting in different pools for about 10 minutes.

Hawkes Bay

2006-10-24T21:39:00.000Z

We had an unexpectedly long drive from Ohakune. A sign for the Army museum at Waiouru made me laugh. It simply said, ‘Tanks and Guns. What more could you want. Army Museum.’ We hit Palmerston North at lunchtime and taking advantage of it’s reputation for having a café culture ate at a very nice place, Moxies. Out of town heading east we passed the beautiful Manawatu Gorge. A railway line straddled the side of the gorge, occasionally dipping into tunnels through the rock. We had planned to stay somewhere in the region of Palmerston, but didn’t really like the look of the small towns along the highway and so motored on to Hastings in the Hawkes Bay region.We found the Top 10 park, which is in a lovely spot within a large inner city park.

The morning found us taking a drive to the ‘village’ of Havelock North, a short way south of Hastings. We’d forgotten that it was labour day weekend and so a good proportion of everything was shut and those cafés and things that were still open were adding a 15% surcharge because of the public holiday. Hawkes Bay is one of New Zealand’s most important wine growing areas. Although we passed several wineries I didn’t much fancy doing the rounds tasting. Sometimes the places are a little posh for scruff-bag like me and a bit intimidating. I felt like the day was going to be one where I felt like that. Instead we drove out to Ocean Beach, reached by a rutted dirt track. What a lovely spot. Families were scattered playing on the beach, or walking dogs. Kids were swimming in the creek and surfies were driving their cars down the beach.

Also nearby is Te Mata Peak. This is a large hill that has a road right the way to the top. We drove up, feeling guilty, as dog walkers and ridiculous looking power walkers trudged up on foot. The view from the top was magnificent. The main developments are on a flat plain amongst farmland and bordered by rolling green hills, which are themselves bordered by mountains. Our minimal driving for the day took us through this pretty pastoral landscape, all the way the stereo pumping out old school hardcore (courtesy of another 2 quid warehouse bargain, ‘Ravin...’)

Afterwards we drove into Napier, booked into the, massive, Top 10 park there and spent the afternoon on a blanket in the sunshine. A couple of bottles of wine and our books had us set for a thoroughly pleasant afternoon. The sun was shining again when we awoke the next morning so we went into Napier centre for a quick look. The town is famed as being the Art Deco capital of the world, due to a 1930’s earthquake destroying much of the town. The subsequent hurried rebuilding was in the prevailing style of the day.

After having our fill of looking at buildings we made once again for the countryside. Travelling north we made excursions from the highway at Tangoio and Waipatiki beaches, both lovely spots with crumbly old baches (pronounced batches), the traditional New Zealand beach holiday home. Apparently land prices, foreign ownership and other pressures are causing the bach tradition to die out. A shame. We took a walk at White Pine Bush Reserve, a little forest reserve with a nice track. Our final stop of the day was Lake Tutira and it’s Department of Conservation camp ground. It looked like a good many families were taking advantage of Labour Day weekend, with tents and cars sprawling all over the lakeside camp sites. We parked up for the day and chilled out, although the severe amount of sheep poo and our lack of picnic chairs put paid to our sunburn ambitions. As the day wore on a fierce wind picked up. This rather cleared out the camp ground, most of the people in tents deciding to pack up and go.

The next morning the sound of sheep bleating woke us up at 05:00, not my best time of the day. The wind hadn’t managed to topple the van in the night, despite it’s best efforts and so we made an early start away from Lake Tutira. The town of Wairoa was a bit scary. We stopped only briefly to get supplies but the place seemed to me to have a bit of a backward, ‘I married my cousin’, hick kind of feel to it. We didn’t have our customary mid-morning coffee. I should have realised at that point that the day wouldn’t be a good one. The weather was looking pretty nasty, and in the newspaper there were warnings about severe weather to come. We had decided to make a 120 km round trip from the main highway to check out Lake Waikaremoana in the Te Urewera National Park. Given the weather we probably ought not to have bothered, but we are optimistic souls and so ploughed on. The road up there was terrible. Despite being shown as sealed on my map, large sections were unsealed and in fairly bad condition. I’m sure someone somewhere has a plan, but I couldn’t make it out. All of a sudden a small stretch of gravel would present itself, followed by a reasonably large stretch of tar and then a massive section of gravel again.

The weather hadn’t changed when we reached the visitors centre. Despite the drizzle and the threat of a real downpour from the black clouds above we tried to do a short walk. We made it about 100m down the track to be confronted by a tape blocking access. Dejected, we turned round and took the crap road back to the highway.

Morere was the first place we came across with a van site so we stopped there. Although quite old school it was in a nice spot, by a stream. As tends to happen for some reason on Sundays I ended up spending most of the day lazily reading the newspaper with a beer.

Hot Pot

2006-10-24T21:37:00.000Z

From Waihi Beach we had an easy drive down to Rotarua. The town is one of New Zealand's premier tourist attractions because of the geothermal activity in the area. The drive down was pretty dull and we had rain almost all of the way. We both realised that we had colds starting which added to the gloom. We perked up slightly when we arrived at Rotarua and stopped at a small park which has thermal activity. We took a walk around the park marvelling at the bubbling pools of mud and the plumes of steam coming from everywhere. This is pretty much the only thing you can do for free in Rotarua, which I quickly came to realise is the Queenstown of the North Island, so we were glad to happen upon it. Because of our colds and the weather, neither of us really fancied doing much more so we found a van park and booked in.

The park was right by Lake Rotarua, although out of the town itself at Ngongotaha. The lake was formed in the crater left by a volcanic eruption. Nearby Lake Taupo was formed in the same way. Lake Taupo was our next destination. In the morning we drove down to Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland. It was hard to decide to go there. Because of all of the geothermal activity in the area there are many different places to see, all with different features, most with a similar entrance price. But being on a budget we settled on Waiotapu because of the write up in the guidebook. I had quite fancied Hell's Gate, of which George Bernard Shaw said, ‘I wish I had never seen the place, it reminds me too vividly of the fate theologians have promised me.’ We had to pick out one place though, and so Waiotapu was it. We arrived quite early to a mercifully empty car park and set about doing the walk round the ‘wonderland’. The walk took us past various different pools and interesting features; steaming pits, boiling mudpools, mineral terraces of varying colour and massive craters. Down the road there is the Lady Knox Geyser which erupts every day, with the help of a packet of soap, at 10:15. We arrived in the very busy geyser car park and took a seat in the amphitheatre, feeling glad that we’d done the walks early. A guy with a microphone explained a bit about the geyser and why they use the soap-like substance to start it off whilst the geyser was foaming and getting ready to erupt. There was quite a jet when it erupted and it continued to spurt a fair volume of water into the air for some time. Back in the van I was glad we were going the opposite way to the rest of the departing vehicles.

Nearer to Taupo we stopped at another geothermal area, The Craters of the Moon. This one was run by the Department of Conservation and a volunteer trust and was much cheaper. Although it didn’t have quite the same range of features as Waiotapu, it was just as enjoyable. It’s a wild heathland, pockmarked with steaming craters. We took a slow walk round the, marvelling at how the ground underneath us could be so hot, whilst we were shivering in the biting wind.

Just over the highway from the Craters of the Moon is the Huka Falls road, and the falls of the same name, although they are, perhaps, misnamed. The water doesn’t so much fall as get forced through a narrow rock channel. The river is lovely though, a beautiful turquoise colour. Nearby we made our coffee stop at the Honey Hive. As the name suggests this is a shop selling honey related products, amongst other things. After coffee I took a look at their glass enclosed hives, tasted some honeys and bought a couple of bottles of honey beer.

We’d picked out a van park in advance, De Bretts Thermal Resort and so went there next. Our colds were making us both feel pretty ill. Staying at the De Bretts Resort gave us discounted entry to Taupo Hot Springs, on the same site. Thinking that a dip in mineral-rich thermal pools might help our colds we took advantage of the discount. It was lovely. The outdoor pools are of various temperatures, so we alternated between them for a while before taking a private pool. I felt a little better afterwards so perhaps the pools did have a therapeutic effect.

I felt so much better that I was able to open the honey beer to toast the engagement of Neil and Amy. Congratulations!

The night was freezing cold and both Gemma and I felt woolly headed in the morning, partly from not sleeping properly and partly from the colds which hadn’t disappeared after the mineral bathing. We considered booking in for another night at Taupo but decided to soldier on. We made a brief foray into the Tongariro National Park, mainly to look at Mount Ruapehu and Mount Ngauruhoe, both active volcanoes and both used as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. As so often happens the mountains were unfortunately shrouded in cloud. We took a short but steep walk up the hillside next to the visitors centre in Whakapapa. The cloud round the mountains didn’t lift but the walk was well worth it to escape the traffic noise below, it being replaced by birdsong.

Neither of us felt much like a big drive so we turned in for the day at the small town of Ohakune, which has the twin pleasure of being both New Zealands après ski and carrot capital. The sun was shining so we took the 2 minute walk through the bush to town, getting lost and doing a much longer loop walk. I’m glad we took the wrong turning though, because the walk through the native forest was very nice. We missed having a dog with us. Eventually we found the town which was quite small and also quite pretty.

Hey Crabman @ Uretiti Beach, New Zealand

2006-10-24T07:41:00.000Z

Hey Crabman @ Uretiti Beach, New Zealand
Originally uploaded by timparkinson.

Hooray! Just made public our latest batch of photos from New Zealand which gets us just about up to date. We've passed the 3,000 photo mark in our group pool for our trip (http://www.flickr.com/groups/getyourbootson/).

Thermal activity

2006-10-24T06:51:00.000Z

New Zealand’s main volcanic region runs through the centre of the North Island. Roturua has the most thermal activity in New Zealand and as soon as we entered the town we saw evidence of this in the weird form of steaming drains and a park with steam rising from various points. The park is an area of volcanic activity and it's most recent eruption in late 2003 covered it in mud. Nobody was hurt, but it must have been an amazing sight. We wandered round the park which had a crater lake, pools of boiling mud, lots of steam and a horrible eggy smell.

The park was our first introduction to the delights of thermal activity. The next day we headed to one of the many thermal reserves in the area, choosing Wai-o-tapu (meaning sacred waters) Thermal Wonderland. The title wonderland put me off a bit. It put me in mind of Disney land or something. Never the less we paid our admission and entered the reserve. It was early and we were one of the first people to arrive. The reserve was spectacular. Volcanic activity produces some very beautiful results. It had craters, blowholes and mineral terraces. It was all beautiful, bright colours caused by mineral elements. The most striking was probably, “Champagne Pool” which was a large pool which was formed 700 years ago by a hydrothermal eruption. It was bright blue ringed by bright orange (caused by the many minerals in the pool) and was steaming heavily.(The surface temperature was 74 degrees F.)

Walking around you have to keep to the designated track. You wouldn't want to leave it seeing the amount of steam and bubbles coming off some areas. The water which is underneath the ground heated by magma left over from earlier eruptions is so hot temperatures of 300 degress F. have been recorded. Tim tried to get me to walk off the path to see what would happen, but I declined.

The reserve also has a geyser which at 10.15 each day spouts with a little help from some soap powder. We wanted to see it spout and apparently so did hundreds of others who whilst we had been enjoying the reserve mostly on our own, had arrived in a seemingly frenzy. As we walked to our car (you had to drive to get to the geyser) others screeched away in their cars and motorhomes and I heard an American whine, “I only want to see the geyser I don't want to pay to see loads of mudpools as well. Well we'll not be seeing the geyser then.” I thought she was going to stamp her foot.

We arrived at the geyser with the hoards and I thought it was funny that we were all so eager to see some water spurt out of a rock (I know. I have a way with words). I was even more amused when I saw that there was a kind of amphitheatre; graduated benches set around the geyser so we could watch it in comfort. We all sat down to wait for the rock to spurt and then some bloke came out, complete with microphone to introduce it (and to put some soap powder in to help it along). It reminded me of being at a theme park and I expected some sea lions to come out and do tricks. There were no seal lions but the Geyser did erupt and it was quite nice to see, amid the people getting their photos taken in front of it.

We left the geyser and headed, smugly, in the opposite direction to everyone else who were going to see the rest of the reserve. I was very relieved we had got there early and had the opportunity to enjoy the reserve without anyone else there. We stopped off at some mud pools which were bubbling and spurting away. I expected David Bowie to appear and some creature to come out of the pools. (Ref: Labyrinth- a great film and there was something about David Bowie in those tights..... Anyway I've said too much...)

Our next stop was the “Craters of the Moon” another thermal area, run by the Department of Conservation and so has less tourists because it is not as commercially exploited. It was another beautiful, eerie and strange sight and site of steaming craters amidst the sparse landscape with specially adapted plant life. Again there were warnings not to wander off the board walk. I wasn't about to but apparently people before the board walk was put in walked down paths that weren't “the real” paths and got burned feet. Ouch.

We arrived in Taupo which has a lake of the same name which was formed by one of the greatest explosions of all time. The area is still volcanically active and has thermal areas. We booked into a holiday park which was next to the hot springs. We utilised the discount we got for the springs for staying in the park and were very happy we did when we sank in to the hot waters of one of the out door pools. We hadn't been feeling well and this was exactly what we needed. We floated about for a while with the public before going in to one of the private pools. It was a lovely end to a thermal themed few days.

Coromandel Peninsular

2006-10-17T10:20:00.000Z

After the brief stop at Ezy we rushed out of the city as quickly as we could. The traffic was heavy but moving and we fairly easily negotiated ourselves out and onto the Pacific Coast Highway. Gemma took driving in the city and on the motorway completely in her stride. Even while we've been away her confidence in her driving has come on massively. I no longer have to answer yes or no to every single intersection and roundabout, she assumes to go straight on unless I say otherwise. When I do say otherwise I can do it just before a turn off, rather than having to give about 3km notice. As my eyes aren't telescopic and can't see signs that are 3km away this is a pleasing development. As her experience and confidence have come on so has her shouting at other drivers. A sailor in the cab of our van would probably blush at the language sometimes used. Gemma is white van man. Admittedly her outbursts are normally justified, and caused by her trio of hates; people getting too close behind her, people randomly changing speed in front of her and non or incorrect use of the indicator. She hasn't yet developed a hatred of drivers wearing hats but I sense that it is only a matter of time.

Out of Auckland we stopped in the small town of Clevedon, with Gemma raging after following a scenic route sign and finding the road to be nondescript to the point of being dull. I treated myself to a venison burger while Gemma grumbled about signage. Continuing along the highway we found ourselves skirting the Firth of Thames. The area has mudflats and is very good for birdwatching. Indeed along the way we saw quite a few wading birds tucking into the things that live in the mud. After quite a long days driving by our standards we checked into Miranda Holiday Park. This was equal in the running for most expensive holiday park in New Zealand. The park had a swimming pool fed from the thermal springs next door, this possibly being the reason for the expense. In keeping with the other really expensive park we'd stayed in, which had a spa and sauna, the hot water related delights were overrun with children. Normally I don't have anything against kids, but you can't relax in the pool with a million kids running about. I saw that it was adults only later in the evening so bought wireless Internet access and tried to upload some photos. The wireless connection was flaky in the extreme such that I managed to upload about 3 photos in 2 hours. The rest of the time saw me tilting and repositioning the laptop, even walking around the park angling it every which way to see where the signal was best. I think Gemma was bemused by my constant mutterings, '12%, 0%, 3%, 6%.' By the time the kids got kicked out of the pool my pointless wrestling with the computer had driven not only the will to swim, but the will to live out of me. I went to bed.

Gemma had the foresight to set an alarm for 06:30 the next morning, the time of the pool opening for an adults only hour. This foresight did not extend to realising that the last thing either of us wants to do at 06:30 in the morning is swim. A futile attempt to get back to the not very good nights sleep I was having ended with us getting up and ready and away from the camp at our earliest time yet. The only hot water was in our tea and in the showers.

The day didn't get much better. Although reasonably buoyant to start with my mood began to become as grey as the sky was. We drove up the peninsular which on the west side is as flat as Norfolk. I was looking forward to a coffee at a café that the guidebook bigged up. This was an 18km drive up a spur from the main road to the town of Colville, popular with hippy Buddhist types. When we got there and discovered the café closed down I started to get properly moody. A coffee back just outside of Coromandel town did little to lift my mood.

At Hot Water Beach, a place where hot springs under the beach mean you can dig a hole in the sand and have your own little hot tub, we found the tide was in. The hot springs are only accessible for 2 hours either side of low tide. I had a bit of a rant about geothermal springs and if I wanted to sit in a pool of hot water I had a perfectly good kettle and bucket in the van.

I decided we better just get checked into the first van park we found. Finding one turned out to be easier said than done. We drove past a couple accidentally and because I had a full on temper brewed up I wouldn't let Gemma turn around, berating the owners for their poor signage. Eventually we turned off to Waihi Beach and found the Top 10 park. I almost cried when I saw that the shop over the road didn't sell beer. I had to make do with the newspaper and a cup of herbal tea instead.

Not so Ezy

2006-10-17T10:17:00.000Z

I sadly said goodbye to our trusty camper on the South Island consoling myself that we would be met by an equally trusty relative on the North Island. After a welcome night in a normal bed and a spa bath we went to meet our new Ezy camper in Auckland. This camper turned out to be an older relative, one who'd obviously been around the block a few times. I was dismayed when I saw that it didn't have tinted windows and got more dismayed as I realised it lacked other little helpful things such as extra storage space we had been used to. Driving along I convinced myself it didn't drive as well. I felt like it was going all over the place, but then Tim pointed out that I had it in over drive when it didn't need to be. I reluctantly let it off the hook with that, but later found new fault against the “new” van when we realised the inverter didn't work which meant the DVD player and the heated towel rail didn't work. Now I can live with out the DVD player, but my God, the heated towel rail?

Slowly I have come round to the new van and have felt quite guilty for my resentments. I mean it's not his fault that he's not an upgraded model like his trendier counterparts. He is still getting us round and we have a bed to sleep in at night.

Since being on the North Island we have camped at some really lovely spots. Matai Bay was a lovely secluded sweep of sand with clear turquoise waters. Previous nights we were at two other lovely beaches and a waterfall. (Haruru Falls) My initial impression of North island was of how much more populated it is compared to the South. I knew this to be the case, but it was still a shock to drive with lots of people. We had to drive on Motorway through Auckland initially and it was like driving through London. I just wanted get out. Outside of Auckland was busy too (relative to the South).

Leaving Haruru we picked up our first hitch-hiker who when he got out told us not to give lifts to everybody, especially blacks. I've noticed there is a tinge of racism towards the Maori people, (you know the kind, “I'm not racist but...)” in the people we have spoken to in NZ. After we dropped him off we went to the site where the treaty between Maoris and British was signed in 1840. In the grounds was a beautiful Maori war canoe carved out of Kauri tree and next to it was the stump of the tree they used. It was very big and I was to see how big they are alive the next day. (More about that later).

We carried on in to KeriKeri down the road for our daily “out of the van coffee” after which I spotted a boutique chocolate shop where you can watch them make and have tasters. I screeched the van into the drive, tasted their very generous (not) two, very delicious chocolates. Then somehow we ended up in another winery with me driving again. We had a very lovely lunch and Tim didn't even taste the wines, other than a glass with lunch (of which he bought a bottle). After lunch we had a satisfying shop for veggies at an organic farm before going to another winery where Tim did try this time and bought a lovely chardonnay which tastes like butterscotch. I wouldn't mind spending most of my days doing the above. It was a lovely end to the day when we found our spot for the night at a lovely secluded beach. (Well it was secluded except for a few cows which meandered past and until three other vans came and parked, strangely next to us, even though there was loads of space.) It was pitch black finding our way to the toilets until we looked up and the sky was illuminated with millions of stars. The night sky is one of my favourite parts about camping in the middle of nowhere.

Earlier I mentioned about Kauri trees. I had been impressed with the skill which the Maori canoe had been carved, but was equally impressed when we stopped for our daily coffee at “Ancient Kauri Kingdom,” a workshop, cafe and gallery. Here 45,000 year old perfectly preserved Kauri trees which have been dug up from swamps are made into furniture and wood craft products. The furniture was absolutely beautiful and I found it even more so knowing how old the wood they are made from is. The most impressive part though was a staircase made out of a giant upright Kauri log (the biggest found so far) with a spiral staircase carved into it which takes you up to the mezzanine level. It was beautiful and probably the closest I'll ever get to going up “The Faraway tree” (My favourite Enid Blyton story as a child).

After seeing Kauri craft we wanted to see live Kauris so headed to Waipoua Forest which was were prevented from being chopped down by the logging industry in the 1950's. There are no longer giant Kauri forests like there used to be because we came and chopped them all down to make way for farm land and to make furniture etc out of them. However, thankfully there are still some left and we saw the two largest still living Kauri trees. It was another “wow” moment when we were confronted with the first one which made the trees around it look like matchsticks. These trees are about 2000 years old and it is awe inspiring to gaze up at them and think what they have lived through.

The next day we went to the Kauri museum (can't get enough of these Kauris). The Lonely Planet said that it would “leave you amazed at how impressive wood can be.” It was a lovely museum (I was grateful there weren't too many information boards as I always feel I have to read every single bit and then later find that I can't remember anything anyway, so photographic memory Tim has to tell me about it all again) but I had been prepared the day before at “Ancient Kauri Kingdom” at how impressive wood can be. However, again I felt awe struck when I saw a comparison of the girth of trees shown by rings painted on the walls. The largest tree we had seen the day before was not the largest tree ever recorded and in fact was about 4 or 5 rings in, so considerably smaller. It was amazing to consider how big that tree must have been. There were lots of displays showing the lives of Kauri bushmen, tradesmen and their families. Because we are cultural we liked it when we pressed a button and a model cow got milked!

We left the Kauri coast suitably impressed and amazed at wood and headed back through Auckland stopping at Ezy rentals where they had said they would replace our DVD player with a portable one which we were glad of only because it gives us more storage space. The girl told us that the heated towel rail wouldn't work though. We nodded and she laughed and said, “the DVD players more important though ay?” I forced a nod and smiled through gritted teeth. Clearly the girl has her priorities wrong.

The North of the North

2006-10-14T05:44:00.000Z

Surprisingly, given the amount of other flights that were delayed, our plane to Auckland was on time. The airport in Auckland was heaving with people. At the baggage reclaim we found an information board advertising local hotels. We picked one from the list, BK's Pioneer Lodge, a motel style place, phoned them up and arranged to be picked up from outside the terminal. If anything the scene was more chaotic outside the terminal than inside. Despite signs warning of towing for waiting, there were parked cars everywhere. I'd have liked to have seen them get a tow truck down there. The motel was only a short drive from the airport and when we got there we were told we had the honeymoon suite. The last room because of a cancellation. Honeymoon suite meant that the room had a spa bath. It was a nice room and not too expensive with the added bonus of an Internet connection for the laptop. We set a bunch of photos uploading to Flickr, ordered a pizza and ran the bath. After 3 weeks of driving (well being a passenger) every day, soaking in the spa was a welcome way to work the kinks out of my back. Even if Gemma had run it so hot that I began to turn the colour of a boiled lobster. Not having to assemble the bed for the first time in weeks was a bonus too.

In the morning we rang up Ezy to tell them where we were so they could pick us up and give us another van. The formalities were sorted out very quickly and we'd gotten the same rate as we'd been paying on the South Island for a continuation of hire. We'd been rather spoiled by our van on the South Island. It was the subject of a very recent refit, and given the fact that everything was still wrapped up I think we were the first people to have it afterwards. No such luck on the North Island. The van we were given was obviously well used and just slightly shabbier. Although the vans are the same model, the company has changed the way it does the interior in the newer fit-outs. It's a more sensible layout in some ways. As we pulled away, and for the first 20km a constant stream of complaints poured forth from Gemma about how the van wasn't good enough. She changed her mind though, especially when I pointed out that the wierdness she was feeling in controlling it could be due to the overdrive button being turned on. Once turned off she was much happier.

The first thing we noticed driving north is that Auckland is big. It seemed to take us an age to get out of the city, all on motorway with loads of traffic, something which we hadn't seen on the South Island. We did get out of the city eventually though. Even out into the countryside there was still more traffic and the composition of it was completely different to the South Island. There probably 70% of the other vehicles we saw were camper vans. In the North Island the figure would be less than 1%. We left the highway at Warkworth for a detour to the Goat Island Marine Park. Our timing was way off and we arrived when the tide was too high to properly explore the rockpools. I still managed to see some interesting crabs in the clear pools. There was a wind which made it hard to really get a good look in the larger pools though.

Back on the highway for only a short while, we veered off along the Twin Coast Scenic Route. The scenery was in the main a pastoral backdrop as the road meandered to the coast at Mangawhai Heads. Further along the coast we tried to book into a caravan park, but couldn't find the owner who was, as a sign proclaimed, off mowing the grass somewhere. The only toilet block we could see was roped off and being subject to the attentions of a couple of builders, so we thought better of it and continued up the coast. At Uretiti Beach we found a reasonably large, but fairly empty, Department of Conservation camp ground. We parked up for the night. As the name suggests the camp is right by the beach so we had a walk across the wildflower covered dunes and down onto the very wide expanse of sand.

It rained sporadically during the night and was still going off and on when we got up. We continued north through Whangarei, pausing to have a look at Whangarei Falls. This was a really rather pretty spot. It's not often you see a large waterfall within a reasonably large town. We detoured towards Tutukaka, a centre for fishing and diving. The Poor Knights Islands, apparently New Zealands top, and in the world top 10 diving spots is just off the coast here. We passed lovely small coves with turquoise water which turned crystal clear in the shallows next to the beach. At Tutukaka itself we parked up at the marina and ate lunch looking at all the fine boats.

The road curled back towards the highway, which we followed up to Te Haumi, where we booked into Beachside Holiday Park. They weren't lying with the name as the park stretched right down to the waters edge. Throughout the night we could hear loud bird calls and the lapping of the waves on the beach.

In the morning we took the ferry across to Okiato and then drove to Russell. A town I mean, not a man called Russell. We hopped out there for a coffee and muffin. The town itself is quite historic, but we didn't stay for long. Charles Darwin described it as being full of the 'refuse of society' but I think it may have gentrified since then.

Back in the van we took the loop road back down the coast and toward highway 1. We were looking for beautiful little secluded coves. We found plenty of beautiful spots but no places to stop the van for a look. We did manage to stop in a couple of places. Bland Bay was really rather nice, so we had lunch there. Along from it was a lovely DOC camp site at Whangaruru North. We decided to carry on down the road as my map had more camping symbols printed on it and it was still early. The two that we stopped at though had no camp grounds. I think that many spots have been closed to camping because of campers messing the place up and emptying waste tanks.

The whole coastline was a little more built up than we'd envisaged. Every bend and twist of the road had an estate agents sign on it, most advertising, not properties, but lifestyles. People had told us that the North Island would seem more populous than the South Island, and given that three quarters of the population live here I had sort of expected it. Out of Auckland though, I thought things would be much smaller. I was wrong. Outside of the small towns the scenery was very nice. Still mainly rolling hills and grazing land, but a little bit more forested and wilder looking than we'd been driving through over the past couple of days.

We hit the highway again just at the place that we'd had a coffee the previous day and had to retrace our route back to the Bay of Islands. We drove past the camp site that we' d been in the previous night and continued on to Haruru Falls and the Haruru Falls Resort. We got a spot right by the river with a view of the waterfalls that give the town it's name. As it got dark a tour boat appeared and came up the river to the falls. Lights came on and lit them up. Another lovely spot to park up for the night.

In the morning we backtracked to Waitangi. We picked up a hitcher going to Paihia as we pulled out of the van park. Waitangi is the site of the signing of the Treaty which give birth to New Zealand as a nation. The treaty, which was between the British Crown and the Maori people of the North Island, is still subject to arguments today about the exact wording of the treaty and it's intent. The short film that explains the history of New Zealand leading up to the treaty was quite interesting, but the room was chilly so I was glad to get out into the sunshine. Also around the site are a restoration of the British Resident's house and a Maori war canoe built for the centenary of nationhood. The canoe was very impressive, the more so sitting next to the stump of the giant Kauri tree from which it was carved.

Just on the northern end of the Bay of Islands area is the town of Kerikeri. This town is right in the middle of a large fruit and vegetable growing area. In the town itself every other shop is a cafe. Unsurprisingly, we stopped for a coffee. We mulled over where to have lunch, deciding to treat ourselves at one of the wineries that we'd seen signposted on the way in. We drove to the first one we came to again, the Marsden Estate, and had a lovely lunch and took away the obligatory bottle of wine. We were happy that the area was big on fruit and vegetables, because we needed to get some food. We found an organic vegetable farm and re-stocked. On the way back we happened to pass the area's other winery so popped in so that it didn't feel left out. An American couple who arrived in their yacht and stayed own the Cottle Hill winery. They have a couple of Chardonnays that are really silky and buttery. We took another bottle away with us.

North out of the Bay of Islands is Doubtless Bay, so named because Captain Cook (that fellow again) noted in his journal that it was, 'Doubtless a bay'. The landscape alternated between farmland, pine forest and denuded hills that used to be pine forest. At times we passed close to the sea and would crest a hill and be rewarded with a beautiful view of the sea sparkling in the bay. We continued onto the Karikari peninsular and to the very end, Maitai Bay. At the end of the road we found a DOC camp ground on a hill, a short step over the dunes to the beach. It was lovely and we instantly made up our minds to stay the night. At the end of the beach were rocks and when the tide went out we spent some time poking around in the pools in them.

In the morning we continued along the Twin Coast route, which hooked west. In the town of Awaui the road forks, one way taking you north toward Cape Reinga. This is the northernmost point of New Zealand and is mainly known for 90 mile beach, which can be driven down. Not, unfortunately, in hire cars, so we carried on in search of our main pre-occupation for that day. Trees. Near Awanui is the Ancient Kauri Kingdom. This is basically a furniture shop with a café in it. I found it much more interesting than it may sound. They use Kauri wood. Kauri forests once dominated the north west of the North Island. The wood was highly sought after for various applications, and logged mercilessly. As the trees are very slow growing this was an unsustainable practise and now there aren't many Kauri left, other than in reserves. This shop and it's affiliated craftsmen use Kauri sourced from local peat swamps. These massive trees have been sitting submerged for 45,000 years.

The furniture in the store was amazing. Sofas and tables carved and shaped from single massive blocks of Kauri. The craft gifts were somewhat less amazing. It's a little sad to see a 45,000 majestic tree reduced to a soap dish. The centrepiece of the shop is incredible. The mezzanine floor is reached by means of a spiral staircase carved into a huge section of Kauri trunk. If you like things made of wood, and I do, then this is a must see.

Following the road South we came to Hokianga Harbour which we crossed by ferry from Rangiora. The ferry was on the other side of the harbour so Gemma insisted that we make lunch, the ever popular eggy-wraps. I warned that there may not be time due to the imminent arrival of the ferry, but was shot down by a scathing glance. A hungry Gemma is a not to be messed with so we started cooking with the van sitting in the queue. Of course the ferry turned up, forcing me to virtually inhale my food in a rush to get on it. We'd have been better waiting until we were on it because we sat around waiting to fill the ferry up and the crossing took 15 minutes. We spent this time staring into other peoples vans. We've become obsessed by the interior layout of camper vans and we can't walk or drive past one now without trying to peer inside.

In response to public pressure the Waipoua Forest was given protected national park status in the 1950's. The highway cuts deeply into the forest which is thick on both sides. The two largest living Kauri trees are both within this park, Tane Mahuta, The God of the Forest is the largest. The huge tree towers over the surrounding forest. Further south is Te Matua Ngahere, The Father of the Forest. Not as tall as Tane Mahuta, this tree makes up for it with a massive girth. Both trees are estimated to be more than 2,000 years old.

After spending the night at a reasonably pleasant little van park by a river at Kaihu we set off south again. We stopped at the very interesting Kauri & Pioneer Museum at Matakohe. Unusually for small town museums, this is an excellent place. It's packed with original equipment and goods from the logging industry. Inside is a section from a Kauri tree killed by lightning and subsequently milled. It is huge. As a comparison on the wall are drawn circles to indicate the girths of the currently living largest and recorded largest Kauri trees. This section is dwarfed by them.

Our time in Northland came to an end as we hit the motorway back into Auckland. We had to stop by the city branch of Ezy as the invertor in the van was buggered. I'd arranged for them to take the TV out and swap it with a portable DVD player. I wasn't bothered about the DVD, as I could always watch them on the laptop if the need arose. But getting rid of the TV gave us a lot more storage space to play with. Unfortunately the heated towel rail in this van works from the invertor not 240v, so no warm cosy towels in the mornings!

Seals are our only friends

2006-10-08T10:03:00.000Z

Our last couple of days on the South Island were spent in a really lovely place called Kaikoura. From the wine region we drove along a winding road that hugged the turquoise coast. After a stop at a cafe (which was ideal for my future house; rustic, beamed building with a big fireplace in the middle of the room, big windows looking out on to the decking and beach with blue sea and snow capped mountains) and stops to look at lots of seals which were perched on rocks and playing in rock pools we arrived in Kaikoura. As soon as we drove in to the town I liked it. I don't really know why. It bore similar “new world” businesses and houses as other towns we have seen, but for some reason I got a good feeling about it. Maybe it had something to do with the lovely blue sky and the perfect snowcapped mountains framing the town. As we saw more of it it became even more beautiful. The sea was a lovely turquoise colour and met the mountains.

Tickets for a seafood, music and wine festival had sold out so we spent the day walking to see more seals. We walked along the foreshore which can get cut off by tide. We walked a while before deciding that we had better turn back; Not before seeing the lovely sight of a dead sheep though. It was lovely. I was concentrating on not slipping over on the slimy rocks and wafting the seaweed flies away when I noticed a white rug looking thing. Tim said “ugh, don't look” and of course I did as it is impossible not to when somebody says that. It's face had practically gone but its body was in tact. The poor thing had probably fallen down the cliff.

Yet again I took Tim to another winery. I think he might be getting a bit too used to it now! It was a beautiful winery perched on a hill, with yet again beautiful scenery of the blue sea, snowcapped Mountainous variety. Another drive to yet another beautiful part of town and looking in rock pools and I decided that Kaikoura is my favourite place (so far and in the inhabited sense) in NZ.

We headed back to our van park which from our van has views of, yes you guessed it, beautiful scenery of snowcapped mountains. We had a drink with our next door neighbours before heading into town, on the way admiring the pretty clouds. We went to a pub which had D.J's playing in the courtyard and had a boogie. It was nice end to a great day and our time in South Island.

The next day we headed to Christchurch, again driving down windy roads hugging the coast. You would think with the amount of seals we have seen recently we wouldn't have stopped to look at more, but we never tire of them and stopped to watch a little one swim and climb on a rock. Kaikoura is famous for the wealth of marine life; whales, dolphins, penguins etc, but they didn't want to come and see us this time. I really love New Zealand but it is a bit short on wildlife for my liking. They do have a number of unique birds, but introduced species and man have taken their toll on numbers.

We had to give our van back, at which we were quite sad, but we have another one lined up for the North Island. Tonight though we have to stay in a hotel. It will be weird not having to assemble our bed before we go to sleep.

Wine

2006-10-08T10:01:00.000Z

Tim has had to work really hard today. I don't know how he has done it. I only had to drive backwards and forwards around Marlborough District. I was lucky, I didn't have to drink many many hand-crafted boutique wines. Tim on the other hand bravely rose to the challenge. Five wineries, six or seven tasters in each.

In one winery we were served by a European girl. Quite a scary girl in fact. She was very knowledgeable about wine though. I tried not to laugh when she breathily said, “it's silky on the throat”. You could almost hear her trying to put the silk into her voice. I foolishly asked where she was from only to regret it when she said, “where do you think I'm from?” I replied, “Oh, I'm not very good with accents.” To which she responded (scarily), “You've heard enough of my accent to guess now, NOW GUESS!” Tim suddenly became very interested in the tasting notes as I nervously ventured a guess. “Ummm Italian?” I knew it was wrong, but could not think of a better answer. I awaited her reply with trepidation, but she matter of factly said “Oh. No, Czech republic”.

Next stop was Highfields which a lady at our first stop had recommended for the views from the top of a tower. As we walked in a lady approached us asking what she could do for us today. Tim promptly said, quite loudly in his Geordie accent, “For starters I'd like to have a look up your tower!” The lady looked quite surprised then bemused before she showed us to it. The view was lovely with 360 degree views over the wine region and surrounding mountains. We sat in the garden whilst I drank a hot chocolate (oh how I treat myself) and watched two dogs racing round. I love dogs.

Tim drank more wine and lost the ability to navigate. I am sure he had the map upside down at one point. We managed to find our way to the ('70's) caravan park and now I am drinking the fruits of his labour. Although I didn't partake in the tasting today I had a really nice day.

Kaikoura

2006-10-08T09:40:00.000Z

The Bacchanalian excesses of the previous day did not leave me in too bad a shape. (Actually I know people are going to read that and laugh -a day with like 6 glasses of wine is hardly an orgy of hedonism.) We left the van park and headed south to Kaikoura. More winding mountainous roads to start with and then following the coastline. The Kaikoura mountain range being visible in the windscreen. Because of the winding roads it took us some time to get to Kaikoura. We didn't really stop along the way other than for a coffee and at a seal colony. I don't know what it is about seals that gives us such pleasure, but both of us can sit and watch them lying about and scratching themselves for ages. Lets face it, lying about and scratching is pretty much the sum of seal behaviour when out of the water. In this particular colony were some rocks with a large pool in them. Many of the younger seals were playing in the pool, rolling about and mock-fighting.

In Kaikoura we noticed a lot of people around. The woman at the caravan park told us this was because of the Seafest due on in town the next day. A festival of music, wine and seafood sounded good to me but unfortunately tickets were sold out. Kaikoura is famous for whale watching and crayfish. When I think of crayfish I think of the yummy little prawn-like critters that live in British rivers. Not these though, they're are huge great lobster beasts.

We were lucky to get a van park space. Thankfully they'd kept a couple back for stupid tourists like us who blundered in not knowing that the Seafest was on. As the day went on the park began to fill up with a mix of people, camper vans, tents and cars. Despite the frost warnings many of the young ladies had gone with hot-pants as their chosen attire. I was all for that decision. In addition to the main Seafest on the Saturday were several bands on the Friday night. This was also sold out. So we sat wrapped in a blanket watching a DVD. We'd bought 3 comedy classics on one DVD for 3 quid. I think the words comedy and classic might have to be re-examined. Possibly, 'straight to video' and 'not very funny' might be more apt.

In the morning as the streams of revellers made their way to Seafest we scooted past them and on through town. Although famed for whales, Kaikoura is a bit of a haven for marine mammals in general. There are several established seal colonies in Kaikoura with the seals sunning themselves on the rocks. We took some photographs at the nearest colony before starting to do a walk down the foreshore. Gemma spooked me by saying we should have gone to the information centre to check the tide tables, so we turned round halfway. I had visions of us sharing a rock with a seal and waiting for the tide to go back out!

In the afternoon we drove round to South Bay and walked around the rocks looking at little fish in the pools. The sea is beautifully clear close up and a lovely turquoise as you look out across the bay. Everything is framed by the snow covered Kaikoura mountains. I managed to get some shots of a seal in front of the mountains which I hope comes out. We both got a bit annoyed at the stupid tourists ignoring the signs saying to stay 10 meters away from the seals. I know we are tourists, but we like to think we try and pay attention to the rules, which are normally there for a reason. These people were getting really close for photos which hacked us off a bit as the seals were getting obviously agitated. It would've been their own fault if they'd gotten bitten!

We went to the Kaikoura Wine Company. This was the first winery we'd been to in New Zealand that charged for tastings. But $4 to taste the whole range wasn't too bad. They claim to be the most scenic winery in the country and they might be right. On one side the straight rows of vines lead up to the mountains and on the decking the view is out over the ocean. I rather forgot about the hole in the ozone layer and didn't wear my hat, suddenly realising that my head was cooking. This was commented on later by the retired couple next to us in the van park.

The town was packed with drunken revellers when we went out for dinner. A liquor ban on the streets seemed to have been utterly ignored. After wolfing down a bag of fish and chips we went for a drink in Strawberry Tree in town. This drink soon turned into several, as a Seafest after-party started in the garden. I was busy snapping pictures of the moon and the lasers when I got asked whether I was from the newspaper by a very smiley chap. Perhaps it's the big camera. Another smiley type came over later to tell us that it was his laser that I was taking photographs of. There were two totally different parties happening there that night. Inside lots of young ladies were clustered around the jukebox singing their heads off. Lots of rugby shirt wearing blokes were watching them, some with very disturbing mullets. When we left we were surprised to see a queue to get in snaking right down the street. On the other side of the street two girls were involved in a bit of a brawl and half the town was watching.

Gemma proclaimed Kaikoura as her favourite town in New Zealand so far. It does have a lot in it's favour, the turquoise sparkling sea teeming with marine life. Seals and dolphins and whales, although the cetaceans eluded us. The mountains looming off in the distance. All in all a pretty picture. Perhaps the only downside is the amount of mullets sported by the male town folk. All good things come to an end though and the following morning with a hangover kicking in we wheeled out of town for our very last drive in little DKJ705. We were both quite sad to be saying goodbye to our trusty little van, but say goodbye we had to. Back at the depot in Christchurch, and roughly 3900 km later, we dropped off our little friend and went to the airport. Between the hangover and the fact that we've mostly been in the middle of nowhere for weeks the hustle and bustle of the airport was a bit of a shock to the system.

Malborough and surrounds

2006-10-08T09:39:00.000Z

We left Abel Tasman National Park and hit the road again, unavoidably retracing our steps as far as Nelson, which we breezed through without stopping. Another winding road took us up into the hills and back down again, mainly through pine plantation. At Pelarus Bridge we stopped and walked the short Tōtara Walk. So called because of a very large specimen of the tree of the same name. The forest had many other species of native tree, and Gemma brought along a little field guide that she bought so that we could identify them. We are such geeks.

At Havelock the highway bears south toward Blenheim, or you can turn off onto the scenic drive straight to Picton. We chose the scenic drive, a very winding road that climbs and drops along with the hills. All along the way the road overlooks stunning turquoise bays of the Malborough Sounds. We stopped in Picton for fuel and supplies. At the supermarket they refused to serve me beer! There were signs up saying that anyone looking under the age of 30 would need I.D. For starters I'm over 30 and as 18 is the legal age for buying alcohol 30 seems a bit overzealous. As we didn't have any I.D. on us the guy referred the matter to his supervisor who was floating about behind him. She said, 'No.' to which I replied, 'Alright, whatever.' She must have taken this as aggression because she got really arsey with us, slamming our rice past the bleeper and virtually screaming the total price at us. We went to the bottle shop down the road and got our beer with no problems at all. By this point time was getting on so we drove a couple of kilometres out of Picton to a van park at Waikawa Bay. It was extremely windy in the van park. Every so often it would start gusting and the van would rock backward and forward.

In the morning we drove back into Picton to do one of the short walks. After a quick stop at the information centre to get a map we were on our way. The walk we chose went up a hill which gave a great view. First over the harbour where we could see a massive ship being loaded with logs and the inter-island ferry, all very interesting if you like that sort of thing. Secondly the view stretched over Queen Charlotte Sound. This is a sound, unlike Milford Sound which is actually a fiord, which means it has rolling hills surrounding the inlet from the sea (as opposed to the mountains and very deep water of a fiord).

After walking back down the hill we drove to the nearby town of Blenheim. This region is famous as New Zealands largest wine growing area. Clustered around the roads from Blenheim to the town of Renwick are many wineries, some large, some small. Something like 25 wineries in a 5km radius of one another. For once I convinced Gemma that she'd like a nice drive in the sunshine while I went tasting. I did slightly bribe her with the offer of a nice lunch. I liked the NZ wineries, everyone was very helpful and I didn't ever feel like I was talked down to, unlike some at the 'Wacky Wine Weekend' we went to in South Africa. I felt a little bit merry by the end of winery number two. I think Gemma enjoyed just watching me get tipsy and a bit silly. We went to 5 wineries in total (MudHouse, Huia, Highfield, Framingham & Nautilus), and I tasted every wine each had on for tasting that day. Most were excellent. At the Highfield Estate there is a tower. From this we had a 360 degree view over the region and could even make out the dark smudge of the North Island on the horizon.

My navigational skills were slightly impaired as we tried to find somewhere to stay, resulting in us taking a bit of a long route. Eventually we found the place we were looking for, a very old school caravan park, basically in the garden of a big old house. It was old school in that it had a lot of caravans (old) and no camper vans except ours. The coinage in New Zealand had recently changed but the showers and the washing machine in the park still took the old coins. I liked it.

Abel Tasman National Park

2006-10-08T09:38:00.000Z

After covering an absolute minimum distance in the previous few days we decided to get moving again. From Westport the road turns back inland, for some time following the Buller River. This is another pretty drive. The road twists and turns along with the river, hugging the side of the gorge. At times the river disappears behind the trees and in places the road passes under arches projecting from the rock walls of the gorge. All along the road the forests looked like a giant natural cloud factory, steaming white puffballs rising up to join the grey covering above. For once in New Zealand we had found a road with a minimum of scenic viewpoints so we drove on until we reached the small town of Wakefield, just outside Nelson. We had to stop and take a photo in Wakefield because of Gemma's family connections with the one in Yorkshire.

We'd been quite up on the idea of staying in Nelson. One reason was that Gemma likes the name and another was that it is reputedly a hip arts and craftsy type of place. The rain which had been following us made our minds up not to stay too long. We'd have to pass back that way anyway, so we decided to put a few more kilometres on the clock. In Motueka we stopped for the day at the Top 10 park. During a brief lull in the rain which happily coincided with tea-time we dashed into town to get fish and chips (or in Kiwi, fush and chups). Although the food turned out to be nice, I almost regretted the decision. The town scared me for some reason. It had the air of a place where the inhabitants have had their brains implanted with mind control devices. I didn't have any evidence, but the dull witted behaviour of the kid in the chip shop convinced me that something was wrong. Most likely aliens, I thought. I asked for cod and chips twice to be told by the boy, waving his finger, that, 'The fish is there and the chips are there.'

I nodded repeating, 'Cod', pause, 'and chips', pause, 'twice.'

He grinned, wrote it down and grinned again. I didn't actually see him tell the guy cooking the food. Telepathy?

In the morning I checked carefully for signs of an anal probe or other extra-terrestrial invasiveness. Fortunately there were none so we hit the road again. There had been continuous rain throughout the night and it didn't really abate in the morning. The whole day was spent dashing in and out of pockets of rain, sometimes drizzle, other times big fat droplets pounding on the windscreen. From Motueka we continued along SH60 towards Takaka, the road winding up and then back down a big hill. There were scenic lookouts along the way, but as banks of fog aren't really our idea of nice scenery we didn't stop. Takaka is a town with a reputation of being a bit of a hippy hangout. The business signs are all 'barefoot' this and 'organic' that. Gemma's eyes started dashing about at clothing and general hippy tat shops so I pulled her into The Wholemeal Café with the promise of a muffin.

The rain had lessened a bit so we thought we'd head up the coast towards the northern tip of the South Island. Just a couple of kilometres out of Takaka is Pupu Springs. Gemma wanted to stop to see if it smelled of poo poo. It didn't. What it was though is the largest freshwater spring in Australasia, and the clearest in the world. Clearly visible through the water were a variety of plants, almost as colourful and interesting as a coral reef. Up at the top of the South Island is a sand spit, Farewell Spit, which is a haven for birds. I thought we could have some lunch while seeing if we could see the spit with our binoculars. Unfortunately when we reached the road to the visitors centre it was closed. We turned round and sighed, resigned to our drive back through the rain. Instead we had lunch back at Takaka in the car park of the information centre. Travel is all glamour.

We stopped for the night at Marahau, the gateway to the Abel Tasman National Park. Total distance from where we started, despite being in the car most of the day -around 35km. The rain continued through the night, the drumming on the roof of the van keeping me awake until 04:30 in the morning. When Gemma was having her breakfast she decided to wake me up by dropping the, quite heavy, pot of salt on my head. Actually, I'm not sure it was a concious decision on her part but it increased my grumpiness several fold. Because of the rain and the fact that I didn't drag myself out of bed in time, we abandoned our plan to do a trip into the national park. The place we were staying did, water-taxi, walk, water-taxi trips. Instead we took a short walk down the start of the Abel Tasman walking track to some lookout points and little beaches. The rain sputtered out, along with my grumpiness. The start of the track follows the coast by a kind of tidal mudflat, so there were lots of birds around. On the way back we passed lots of people starting the track proper, all with very serious packs and very serious expressions on their faces. We got back to the café just as the rain began again.

Wicky Wild Wild West

2006-10-08T09:37:00.000Z

Our 'standard' day involves waking up, disassembling the bed, stowing our gear and driving. I have now grown used to the van and assembling and disassembling the bed only takes five minutes, or 25 minutes if Gemma helps. Typically we drive for several hours, stopping at interesting places to take a walk or take photographs, having lunch along the way. By early afternoon Gemma is normally a bit tired of driving so we'll park up at a holiday park. Usually we cover between 150-200km, some days less, others more. Normally we are the first or among the first people checking in to the parks for the day, although most seem to fill up by sundown.

Although there are some nice walks around the lagoon in Okarito, the rain put us off. We left the village with our eyes open for Kiwis, the birds rather than the humans. Our chances weren't good despite the signs warning of them on the Okarito road because the Kiwi is a nocturnal bird. The road cuts deeply into the rainforest such that the view of the mountains disappears. The towns of the West Coast region have a 'Wild West' frontier town feel about them. They generally consist of one storey wooden houses. The 'Wild West' comparison is not a bad one as the towns are mainly remnants of a cycle of boom and bust following the discovery of nearby gold fields. In the town of Ross we stopped at the visitors centre which attempts to make a big deal of the towns historical and current links to gold mining. Behind the centre is a frankly ugly lake in the belly of a large open mine. There are recreations of historic buildings such as a cottage and a prison, which houses the crappest attempt at the dummy of a man that I've ever seen. In the back of the visitors centre you can pan for gold out of big plastic storage containers. Gemma was disgusted by this and complained loudly that she wanted men with big hats squatting in a creek and sifting in big pans.

Further north we stopped at Lake Mahinapua. There is a camping ground here which tempted us as it is a really pretty spot. Unfortunately the need to do some washing forced us to carry on. Perhaps it was our exertions on the glacier the previous day, but neither of us fancied driving on much further and so we decided to call it a day when we reached Hokitika. We found a van park in the north of town, Shining Star, which was nice and right next to the beach. On the beach was littered a massive amount of driftwood stretching as far as the eye could see. I believe the town has an annual driftwood art exhibition. We walked into town for lunch.

Hokitika is another old gold mining town, but is important today as a centre for the crafting of greenstone. Greenstone is New Zealand Jade, important culturally and historically to the Maori people and still worked into traditional forms as jewellery. After the obligatory glance at the greenstone shops we went back to the van park. We were happy to see that the park was up to date technology wise, having a wireless hotspot. We bought a voucher for it and spent some time uploading photos and blog entries as well as other chores. Sitting in the van next to the beach, tapping away on the laptop I was drawn to thinking that I could get used to that way of life. I could picture myself working remotely, travelling around the UK, Europe or even the world. All that would be needed is ubiquitous affordable Internet access. I digress. Across the highway from Shining Star is a glow worm grotto. Once it got suitably dark we wandered over to take a look. Sure enough amongst the trees little points of light could be seen, rather like Christmas lights. A couple of young families were also there, amusing me by trying to take photographs and having the flash fire. Afterward we rented a DVD from reception and watched it on the player in the van with a bottle of wine.

The road north from Hokitika hugs the coast. At times the salt spray made the mountains in the distance very hazy and indistinct. There are two bridges north of Hokitika. In common with many of the bridges we've been across in New Zealand so far, they are single lane. These ones had the added factor of being single lane for both road vehicles and trains. We blasted straight through Greymouth. I'd thought about getting a coffee or something to eat there but forgotten it was Sunday. There didn't appear to be a lot of activity in Greymouth at 10:00 on a Sunday morning. We did stop at the Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki. Here the limestone and mudstone rocks are formed in layers resembling stacks of pancakes. The rocks have eroded into all sorts of interesting shapes and at high tides there are blowholes amongst channels in the rocks. We were well out of the range of high tide but the waves crashing in the caverns and amongst the pillars of rock were spectacle enough.

Near the town of Westport is Cape Foulwind. This was another naming by Captain Cook, possibly named because of a cracking fart he did whilst spying the cape from his ship. Or perhaps not. There is a very busy car park and walkway there. Mostly people, like us, coming to see the Seal Colony. A breeding colony of New Zealand Fur Seals is well established there. We made like proper tourists and snapped away at them. Gemma was amazed at the speed at which they managed to get over the rocks. At every stop we made we encountered the Weka, a native flightless bird. Normally they would come to the door of the van, look quizzically in and then sit underneath it for five minutes. It was also on these stops that we began noticing signs up proclaiming the use of 1080 in the area. 1080 is a poison which is being used to control the Possum population. Possums were introduced from Australia to start a fur trade and have more than made themselves at home in the New Zealand bush. The shocking statistic is that they chomp their way through 20,000 tonnes of native bush every night. The only Possums that we have seen have been lifeless on the roadside.

Again, we didn't feel like putting in too many miles so we continued just up the road to Seal Colony Top 10 park. This is not brilliantly named as it's about 7km away from the seals. Gemma laughed at me because I got excited about reading the newspaper, with a cup of tea and a slice of cake. It was Sunday though, so I steadfastly defended my decision.

Fox Glacier mints

2006-09-30T01:57:00.000Z

When I first heard of Fox Glacier in New Zealand I immediately thought of those mints you used to get (can you still I wonder) where in the advert a Polar bear balanced on top of the mint. This Fox Glacier was much bigger and there are no polar bears. I couldn't tell you whether it tastes minty, although I am guessing not.

So now I can say that I have walked on a Glacier. It was another brilliant day. We donned our boots and woolly socks at the guide centre and headed off to the Glacier in an old bus (from the same year I was born, 1978) which would be brilliant as a converted campervan. On the bus the guide told us and the group that the walk to the Glacier would be pretty physical, walking up hill through temperate rainforest to allow us to get on to the glacier. There were a few apprehensive faces especially when he said that if he yelled “run” it was very important that we did so, as it would mean there is a rock fall. The walk was up hill and could have been a lot more strenuous but the guide kept the pace quite slow. Luckily he didn't shout run at all, but we did have to pass through an active rock fall bit on his command, in threes and be ready to run very fast if he shouted. The walk was quite a quiet one with an absence of bird song, although I did see a couple flutter by. The quiet was punctuated by water flowing down the Mountain and we saw a few waterfalls one of which I tasted the water from. It tasted much nicer than the NZ water we have tasted so far (it's awful).

We climbed a steep, narrow section, rounded a corner and was greeted by magnificent sight of the glacier below us. We had seen it from the bottom, but from this perspective, it was much more spectacular. From where we stood we could see 7km of ice stretching away. There was another 6km behind a ridge which we couldn't see. We could see people on the ice and they looked tiny. Swamped by the enormity of what looked like an ice mountain, but which essentially is an ice river. We descended down on to the ice. I felt excited and was grinning a way. As we stepped on to the ice we felt an instant drop in temperature. We attached crampons to our boots and plodded away up a path that had been cut and which has to be up kept everyday due to the shifting nature of the ice. The guide lead the way chipping away with his pick axe. The ice is quite dirty in many places due to rocks which the ice brings up, but as we moved further in we could see really white and blue ice. The blue ice in particular was beautiful. Perfect.

It was interesting to see up close the formations that the ice makes. Water was running down the walls of ice all around us and this reminded us that we weren't standing on something solid but in fact an ever changing, moving river. It was interesting to learn of the life of a glacier, how they recede and advance, all due to the patterns of the weather; there are many factors which all interact to determine the Glacier's path. The experience was elating and the Glacier beautiful yet all I could say to Tim was , “Wow it's so...big”. Poignant words I know, but words escaped me. It was great. Much better than the mint version.

Puzzling

2006-09-30T01:56:00.000Z

Today we ended up at Puzzling world. I don't quite know how that happened, but I have to say I really enjoyed it!

A Beautiful Day

2006-09-30T01:55:00.001Z

We have seen what I believe is the most beautiful place today. Today was (even more than usual) a day of Wow's. I could use so many cliches about the scenery we have seen today. I shall try to refrain though.

Yesterday we had a stunning drive to Te Anau with views of snow capped Mountains meeting the sea. Te anau was itself a pretty town centred around the lake with the same name backed by Mountains. Lots of people use Te Anau as a base to get to Milford Sound and we did the same. We didn't really know a lot about Milford sound but had read and seen pictures of it's beauty. We decided we would quite like to go there, but found out that snow chains might be needed for the drive there as parts of the road have dangers of avalanches. This was quite a daunting prospect for someone who has only been driving for a year and who knew nothing of snow chains until that day. The next day we checked at the information centre and they informed us that although there were going to be strong winds, snow chains would not be needed and there was a low chance of avalanches. We decided to go.

Not far out of Te Anau the wind began buffeting the van about and we considered turning back. However, I felt o.k with it and it wasn't constant so we decided to press on. We were glad we did. The lonely planet says it's 119km from Te Anau to Milford on one of the most scenic roads you could hope for. It wasn't lying. It was beautiful. Mountains, farmland, beech forests, then as we passed into the Fiordland National Park it seemed to get even more dramatic with the Mountains towering further above. We stopped at a few places to admire the views; Waterfalls falling down Mountains far above us (and some not so far above us) an icy blue river rushing away from a backdrop of snow covered Mountains and at 'The Chasm' where a short walk through a damp forest of moss covered trees brought us to a place where we suddenly heard a low roar. We looked at each other wondering if we were going to witness an avalanche, but we found the cause of the noise when we rounded a corner, over a bridge and were greeted with a powerful torrent of water (the Cleddau river) cascading through eroded boulders in a narrow chasm. Tim remarked that it and what we had seen so far was awesome. He meant it in the true sense of the word, not the slang way it can be used and I agreed with him then and even more thoughout the day. It was a fitting way of describing some of the sights.

In the Chasm car park we saw a Kea, a Parrot which only lives in Alpine areas. I thought they looked quite a drab and sad parrot but characterful all the same. I felt sad when I saw people feeding them bread to try to get a photo. There were blatant signs up asking people not to. It's not good for the Kea. People make me angry. They seem to think that signs like that don't apply to them .How would they like it if the wildlife started throwing dead prey and nuts and seed at them?

Throughout the drive we drove throughout Avalanche risk areas. Even though there was a low risk of an avalanche it was still quite exciting to drive through. There was evidence of past avalanches, with piled up snow and rocks at the base of Mountains near to the road. The risk areas appeared to me to be even more wild and beautiful than the non risk areas. I have often thought that is true for a lot of Nature. The wilder and the more dangerous = an intense beauty.

The most spectacular of the risk areas began from an exhilarating plunge into darkness into the Homer Tunnel. It seemed to go into the depths of the earth and even though I had my lights on and there were dim over head lights it was difficult to see anything. However I did see water dripping down the sides of the tunnel. This didn't instill confidence and as I drove through I thought of the amount of snow I had seen over the tunnel's entrance. I was concentrating so much on driving in the dark that I didn't even register a car passing me on the other side. Tim mentioned it and I think he was a bit concerned when I sounded surprised..

Emerging from the tunnel we descended down a winding road overlooked by what looked like a massive wall but which were ice carved Mountains, down which ran more waterfalls. A very dramatic sight.

Arriving at Milford sound the rain had set in. This was no surprise as Milford gets 7m of rain a year. We decided, since we were there to go on one of the cruises. There were a few to chose from and they all looked pretty similar. We were a bit concerned that it would be a waste of money what with the rain and mist hovering over the sound, but the guy selling us a ticket assured us it would still be spectacular. Well, he would say that wouldn't he?

However, he was telling the truth. Initially I thought sailing along in the catamaran did not give much of a different perspective from what we had seen driving down, but as we rounded a corner all those thoughts dropped away and all I could think and say was, “Wow!” It is difficult to convey how beautiful it was. For the next two hours we sailed through the most beautiful place I have ever been. We sailed in the Tasman sea in a fiord surrounded by sheer Mountains covered in foliage and trees interspersed with many waterfalls cascading down. We sailed very close to two of these waterfalls and it was at this time when I looked around and felt overwhelmed and moved by what I saw. Everywhere was perfect. Again, it is hard to describe, but at that moment I appreciated the sheer power of nature and how tiny and inconsequential we are. For once the bad weather was a blessing; it only added to the dramatic and magical scene. Most of the waterfalls are only there when it rains and the wind was causing some of them to blow upwards as if they were upside down! The wind was very strong and standing out on the deck was quite dramatic. At one point there was a really strong gust of wind and I couldn't walk. I had to cling on to the side. It sucked my beanie off my head and unzipped my mac! Luckily, I managed to grab my hat. One of the crew said that this is Milford sound at it's best and apparently the Skipper was very excited by it! He certainly sounded it over the tannoy.

Other people were obviously very excited by it too. In particular a Japanese man who was going crazy trying to get photos of his family. He was running all over the boat shouting “here here, photo here” with his family obeying his orders on where to stand in front of various beautiful spots. As the whole cruise was one big beauty spot I think he spent the whole time running round. At one point I saw his wife running, with him barking orders behind her whilst she panickly cried, “where, where” (do you want me) This really amused me and Tim as did a woman wearing a shower cap over her hat.

During the cruise we looked out for dolphins and penguins which sometimes can be seen. We didn't see any, but Tim and I both saw a seal pop out of the water and wave his fin before he went under again. The drive back was equally lovely as on the way there even though the rain had set in. All in all it was a perfect day.

Sheep and Seals

2006-09-30T01:55:00.000Z

Tim has just said for the 5^th time, “shall we go to Puzzling world?”. The first time I thought he saw the advert and thought it looked funny, the second I thought he'd maybe forgotten he'd told me. The third and fourth I kind of ignored him, but now the 5^th time he has said it whilst showing me the picture of it I am sure he really wants to go. I don't. I don't need puzzling any more.

Puzzle world or not we are still having a great time. I thought our New Zealand trip was going to be limited up to and including Dunedin when we drove round and round for an hour trying to get out of the place. Tim got very annoyed and said he was going home. I reminded him that even if he wanted to he couldn't as it appeared we could not leave Dunedin-ever. Not that Dunedin was a bad place, in fact as towns go it was quite nice, but I wanted to be in the middle of nowhere. It all got better when Tim bought a road map and we managed to find the way out. (We had done o.k without a map up 'til then (well, apart from trying to get out of Christchurch where the same happened, but anyway...) no thanks to the road signs that lead to nowhere.

It's true what they say, New Zealand is very beautiful. It's also true that there are lots of sheep. It's lambing season at the moment and every other minute me and Tim can be heard cooing and awwwwing other some cute little lamb bounding along after it's mum. Often witty remarks containing the words mint sauce, shame and dinner follow the cooing and in Tim's case bad dad jokes (no offence Roger) like “oh there's the black sheep of the family” is said when an odd black one skips past.

We have kind of got in to a routine everyday now. Well, I guess it's some kind of routine. We get up, try to leave before 9am (often failing) drive for about 4-5 hours to next destination, on the way stopping at various beautiful spots. I sound blasé about the beautiful spots, but obviously they are what makes this part of the trip and it is made every 5 minutes with many beautiful spots. Since Mount Cook there hasn't been so many Mountains, but lots of telly tubby hills which although is farmland is still beautiful. Interspersing the hills are wild woodlands of the Catlins, where the wind has left it's mark on a lot of trees which permanently look like a strong wind is blowing them, even on a very still day.

Yesterday we saw some stunning coast line, in particular, Nugget point which had a number of picturesque outcroppings dotted in the wild, giant seaweed strewn turquoise sea at the bottom of a sheer cliff. New Zealand fur seals, hooker sea lions and elephant seals all live here together, the only place this occurs on mainland New Zealand. Yellow eyed penguins also live here but are only really seen at sunrise or dusk. We saw what we think were NZ fur seals and hooker sea lions. We think we may have seen an elephant seal too, but as he was in the water could not tell.

The beaches we have seen so far are beautiful wild stretches of sand and turquoise sea. Yesterday we saw seals at Cannibal Bay so called because human bones were found here. Maybe the seals here are particularly ferocious and it was those that caused the fate of the humans. Maybe this is why we didn't get too close or maybe it was their size which put us off; even so we gave them their space.

Our camp site last night was at a no facilities (just toilets) conservation area. These places are dotted around and for a small fee you can camp. It was good to be back, camping (albeit it in a plush van!) in the middle of nowhere. (I found I loved this when we were in Tasmania and other parts of Australia a few years ago). We plan to do more of this whilst in NZ but up until now we have stayed in serviced camp sites. This camp at Parakaunui Bay was right next to one of those wild looking beaches I mentioned earlier. I parked our van pointing towards the beach separated from us by a creek. Later we found ourselves watching sea lions which were pointed out to us by an older couple who were also camping. They were massive.(Not the couple, the sea lions) There were about 5 of them and we tried to get over the creek to get closer, but didn't fancy getting wet and cold so decided to watch them from the comfort of our van. The couple had also seen a leopard seal chasing white bait up the creek which was just in front of us. That would have been cool to have seen. They are scary seals. Apparently they are not common here. Never mind, I was happy enough with what we saw. It was great this morning when I opened our front curtain and the first thing I saw apart from the beautiful sea and sand was one of the seals waddling towards the sea. This is what it's all about.

N.B I think Tim has got over his desire to go to “Puzzling world”. He is now talking about the Sausage capital.....

Glaciers

2006-09-30T01:45:00.000Z

Shortly after booking into the park for the evening we took a walk into the town of Fox Glacier and booked ourselves on the next mornings half day glacier walk with Alpine Guides. We got up there nice and early and packed a bag with some drinks and snacks (One Square Meal cereal bar being our new favourite). Troy, our guide for the day, called us into the boot room where we got woolly socks, big clod hopper leather boots, a rain coat and some crampons. Along with another group we boarded a lovely old 1970's Bedford bus for the short ride up to the glacier car park.

Our group strode off up the path first, getting a good look at the terminal face of the Fox Glacier as we went. Although the public is allowed up to the terminal, only guided trips are allowed to walk on the glacier for safety reasons. The path led up through the forest to a set of 500 steeply carved steps. The couple of stops we made along the way were quite welcome, everyone but Troy huffing and puffing their way along. Fox Glacier and it's neighbour Franz Josef Glacier are two of only three glaciers within temperate rainforest zones. The other is in South America. As we walked on up the path I began to realise how massive the ice flow is. From the terminal to the horizon was 7km, with the twisting ice flows visible all the way. Troy informed us that beyond is another 6km.

We had to pause and cross an active rock spill area. Troy walked to the centre of the area watching a light on a small box attached to a sensor somewhere up the hill. We had to cross in groups of three when he said it was clear to do so, with strict instructions that we should run if he shouted because a rockfall would be occurring. The path continued and narrowed, being bordered by a sheer drop. At this point we had to keep hold of a chain running along the path.

At the terminal end of the glacier were many crevasses, these are giant rips in the surface of the ice going down to a depth of about 50 metres. We crossed from the hillside onto the glacier and put on our crampons. Because the glacier is an ever shifting and changing system the guiding company have to come out at 07:00 each morning to refresh the path or cut new steps. The going at this point was surprisingly easy. Being on the ice was fantastic. Because of the debris stirred up by the movement of the glacier the terminal is quite dirty. We walked further on to where the ice is cleaner, white at the surface where melting is occurring, but an eerie blue in the crevasses and further up the glacier. In places are streaks of dust along the ice faces. Some is clearly mud from the surrounding mountainside, but in other places it is a red colour. This, our guide explained, was Australian dust, blown over the Tasman during dust storms and fallen as snow on the glacier.

All too soon it was time to turn around and head back down, this time getting fantastic views of the valley, carved out by previous advances of the glacier. The terminal moraines of the previous limits were clearly visible. Troy also mentioned that we had passed the fault line which runs from Milford Sound to Nelson, where the Pacific plate pushes up against the Indo-Tasman plate. By the end of the walk I was a bit knackered and pleased that we hadn't done the full day trip. Also available is a heli-hike, though out of our budget range, still pretty good value. With that option you get choppered high up the glacier, walk for a couple of hours and then get choppered back.

As we walked down we noticed clouds rapidly creeping over the mountains and spilling into the valley. We'd managed to pick a beautiful sunny morning with just a few wisps of fluffy white cloud and a blue sky. That was turning though, scuppering our chances of the perfect Lake Matheson photograph. We gave it up as a bad job and drove up to Franz Josef. As we arrived it was raining so we made and ate lunch in the van. It eased off slightly so we braved the short walk to the lookout point. The Franz Josef Glacier is much steeper than the Fox Glacier, the main difference I could work out in the short time we were there. The drizzle began to pick back up again so we headed back to the van.

North of Franz Josef town and 13km from the highway is the small coastal village of Okarito. The village borders a lagoon full of bird-life. We drove through the little village and parked up in the basic camp site, a nice grassy area with an honesty system. It was refreshing being somewhere a bit cheaper after the past three camp sites. Even though it didn't have many facilities, or power, it did have coin operated showers. The breakers roaring away on the beach lulled us to sleep.

Into the West Coast

2006-09-30T01:44:00.000Z

After a brief stop in Wanaka, which actually looks like a reasonably nice little town, we drove out towards the West Coast. The road is bordered on either side by Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea and veers between the two so that for the first part of the journey we had lovely lake views as well as the obligatory mountains that go with them. After Makarora is the Mount Aspiring National Park, densely forested mountain slopes. We made stops at the Blue Pools, which are well named, being blue pools. The snow and glacial melt-water that supplies the river here is very cold and the refraction of light from it makes it look a deep blue colour. Following the trail from the road through the Beech forest we came to a rickety little bridge. Over this lay the Blue Pools. The information board next to it said that big Trout should have been visible. We couldn't see any. We did see lots of Sandflies, New Zealand's favourite biting insect.

We drove over the Haast Pass and officially into the West Coast region. We took another quick rest stop at Thunder Creek Falls, a reasonably large and pretty waterfall. Some way on from the Falls we reached the coast itself and the little village of Haast. We stopped there for lunch. About 30km North of Haast is Knight Point, a lookout on the clifftop. The view out over the Tasman sea took n some small rocky outcroppings and a beach where we could just make out the shapes of Seals (or Sea Lions) lying on the sand.

At Lake Moeraki we stopped again and took the fairly long walk through the forest to Monro Beach. On the West side of the mountains the character and composition of the forest changes. There seemed to be many more species of tree, festooned with mosses, as well as a profusion of tree ferns. The light filtered haphazardly through the trees and the whole place seemed somewhat primeval. Although Monro Beach is a nesting site for Fiordland Crested Penguins, we didn't manage to see any. The beach itself was worth the walk though. Across on some rocks out from the beach we could see the movement of a seal. I would have stayed longer, but the Sandflies decided they wanted to eat me alive. I think Gemma was feeling smug that finally I was getting bitten and not just her.

Back in the van we made a sprint for the town of Fox Glacier. So named because it sits next to the Fox Glacier. We wanted to catch the change in light at the end of the day on Lake Matheson, which reflects the peaks of some of the largest mountains, including Mount Cook. Unfortunately for us the weather had different ideas. The mountains were covered all over by a low hanging cloud. We resolved to try again the next day and checked in at the slightly shabby, and expensive with it, Fox Glacier Holiday Park.

Wanaka

2006-09-30T01:43:00.000Z

I've been unable to read the name of the town of Wanaka without my brain dropping the second 'a'. How rude. We took the slightly longer route to Wanaka via the town of Cromwell. A route planned to take us past lots of wineries on the way, however the hangover from the night before ruined the prospect for me, so we didn't bother going in to any. We did stop at the AJ Hacket bungy centre to have a look at other people jumping. The main reason we stopped was so Gemma could have a look at the river, which was used as a location in Lord of the Rings. I believe it was the Pillars of the Kings bit. My atlas has many little ring icons dotted around in the Queenstown/Wanaka region. It is no wonder, as the place is so pretty. We stopped for a photograph at Lake Dunstan. There was barely a ripple on the surface of the lake and it reflected the surrounding scenery like a mirror.

The next stop we made was at Puzzling World, a name that I've been taunting Gemma with for the whole of the trip. She was sceptical about going to it at first but I persuaded her. She was glad that I did in the end because it was ace. $10 gets you entry to the maze and the illusion rooms. A small price to pay. It's a two level wooden construction with stairs and walkways. The object is to navigate to four corner towers and then find the exit. We did quite well to start with, finding and climbing the first three towers pretty quickly. The last tower infuriated us though. We spent probably double the time on that than we had on the first three. Once we had located the exit we breathed a sigh of relief. I had horrid visions of being stuck in there forever, not able to get out. The illusion rooms were also good. They have several holographic photographs, some of which are excellent. There is the hall of faces, where the faces of famous people appear to follow you round the room. A perspective room makes people look large at one end and small at the other. The last room is tilted, which messes with your sense of balance. In the room are things like a ball rolling the 'wrong' way up a pool table or water running 'up' a pipe. It really messed with my head and I felt ever so slightly sick by the end of it. I'm sure the previous nights beer had nothing to do with it.

We carried on into Wanaka and straight out the other end. After Queenstown I had no desire to be in a town. Outside of town is a small and very plush camper van park. I nearly fainted when she told us the price. Included in the price was use of the spa and sauna. We had planned to avail ourselves of it but didn't because it looked a bit crowded, with a load of families going in.

Queenstown

2006-09-30T01:42:00.000Z

Very near the park we were staying in was a DOC wildlife centre. Several cages and fenced off areas hold examples of some of New Zealands bird life. Some rare others less so. The centre was fairly interesting as I got to put names to some of the birds I'd seen on the road, and to see others for the first time.

After the bird park we drove on to Queenstown. Queenstown is New Zealand's 'adrenaline' sports capital and the place to be if you want to do things like bungy jumping. We didn't want to. Given the choice between seeing a lovely gorge on the end of a bit of elastic or seeing the same gorge on foot or by kayak I know which I'd choose, any day. I know it's a scary proposition launching yourself off a ledge and trusting in the equipment, but no more than the first time you lean back to abseil, I would imagine. And the safety record of the bungy operators is so good that there is almost certainly more risk in crossing the road. What you are buying is the illusion of danger rather than danger itself. Skiing, which is very popular in this area, is much more risky, judging from the number of people we saw on crutches. The truly amazing part of bungy jumping is the rapidity with which it makes your $140 disappear.

On the way into town I was struck by how many people there were. We quickly located and checked into the massive Lakeview Holiday Park. The park was big and well appointed but seemed to have a little bit of a pack-em-in attitude. Showers were coin operated, the first such that we'd seen, which sent Gemma into a bit of a rant. Queenstown was the place that we encountered our first grumpy Kiwis. Up until that point people had been super friendly and service had always been cheery. Not always in Queenstown. Perhaps it is because they know they don't have to try or perhaps it is the sheer volume of tourists bringing people down.

The town was nice enough, sitting on the lakeside with a view of mountains all around it. All around were the sounds of different accents and languages. Everything seems new and clean. It was clear that the whole town is one big well oiled and finely tuned machine with the purpose of separating tourists from their cash. Nowhere was this more apparent than the gondola. We took a ride on the gondola, which is a cable car up the mountain. At the top are a paved luge track, a restaurant and a Maori show centre. We didn't really fancy any of that, and wanted to do a short walk at the top. Unfortunately the track was closed so we had to settle with taking in the view from the viewing deck.

In the evening we treated ourselves to a meal out at the Queenstown branch of the excellent Dux De Lux restaurant/brew-pub. After the meal we had a swift pint in the bar. The swift one turned into several. There was a quiz on and despite not taking part, except to give a few answers to the nearest team to us, we ended up staying until the end. Oddly, many of the questions were about or related to Birmingham.

Milford Sound

2006-09-30T01:41:00.001Z

Our first port of call was the DOC office in Te Anau to check the status of the Milford Road. During winter the road is a designated avalanche zone, this means that the road can be closed or have certain restrictions such as a requirement to carry snow-chains. As the weather was forecast for rain there was a possibility that the avalanche probability level would be upgraded. Luckily the notice pinned to the door of the visitors centre said, 'Avalanche risk: Low', with no restrictions. We would have had to try and hire snow-chains otherwise.

The drive up the Milford road is well worth making in it's own right. It carries you deep into the heart of Fiordland through a landscape that changes from farmland to forest to mountain. Along the way are several scenic stops and lookouts. We stopped at Mirror Lakes, which because of the inclement weather were not very mirror like. On a clear day they must be lovely. Also by the road are beautiful creeks and rivers running with a deep turquoise water. The Homer Tunnel digs straight through the rock. It's a scary dark rough hewn worm hole of a tunnel. Gemma felt quite exhilarated driving through it. On either side of the tunnel is the avalanche zone. No stopping signs are posted everywhere.

Some way after the tunnel we stopped at the Chasm. A short walk from a car park leads through the forest. The trees are covered in thick, almost luminous, green moss. As we walked we heard a terrible thunderous noise. For a moment I almost imagined an avalanche somewhere nearby. Rounding a corner brought us to the source of the thunder. The Cleddau River runs here and a vast volume of water is forced through the narrow chasm. Soft areas of stone have been eroded from the large boulders leaving odd scooped out shapes.

In a couple of the car parks we saw our first Keas. The Kea is the worlds only alpine parrot. They are a fairly drab parrot, being an olive green colour, but inquisitive and with a reputation for being 'cheeky'. Although signs abounded imploring one against feeding the birds, people were still laying out bread for them. There are good reasons not to feed them, and luring them into photograph range is not a good reason to counteract them.

After 120km of driving through such lovely scenery we arrived at Milford and were disappointed to see a thick low lying cloud hanging over the sound. After a coffee we decided that as we'd come this far we may as well do a boat trip on the sound anyway. When we booked our ticket the bloke assured us that the boat would be so close to the walls of the sound that the mist wouldn't matter. Rain is an almost ever present feature of Fiordland. Milford Sound gets in the region of seven metres of rain annually. There are several companies operating out of the 'visitors centre', which may as well be renamed 'booking hall', although there are a few informational displays on the walls. We chose to go with Red Boat Cruises (www.redboats.co.nz) for no good reason. We were glad that we did because the wind made the journey slightly choppy in places the fact that we were on a stable catamaran style boat helped.

The cruise on the misnamed sound (it's a fiord not a sound) blew us away. We were glad we had rain as it made the cruise that much more spectacular. Milford Sound is bordered by the sheer faces of mountains and when it rains water cascades down these in massive waterfalls. Because of the wind some of these were stopped midway and blown back up and away from the rock. The boat manoeuvred close to the edges and almost under some of the falls. One waterfall ran down a vast rent in the rock. The captain informed us that this was actually a fault-line in the earth's crust. At one point Gemma and I standing on the lower outside deck saw a seal flip lazily out and back into the water. Apparently penguins and dolphins are fairly common sights although not for us unfortunately. The scenery of the fiord more than made up for it though. It was majestic and wild and a more superstitious person than I am might proclaim they saw the hand of God in its making. Gemma was moved almost to tears by how awesome it all was. She later described it as the most beautiful place she has ever been. It's a shame the photographs we took can't come close to accurately representing the reality of the place.

The cruise also presented some opportunities for laughing in amongst all the jaw dropping scenery. There was an older Australian woman with a shower cap over her woolly hat which tickled us somewhat. And the Asian family scurrying round for photographs. Where most people were taking photos of the fiord and mountains, the father was scurrying around trying to get his kids in front of every feature. He was up and down the stairs between decks looking harassed and even panicky, as if he couldn't decide where to position his two boys next. Constant shouts rang out. His running about lasted literally the whole trip and gave us no end of amusement.

We had booked to be dropped off at the underwater observatory, but the wind meant that they had closed so we had to get a refund. The fiords in the region have certain peculiar characteristics which allow the growth, near to the surface, of several deep water species such as black coral. The almost constant rain running off the mountains creates a layer of freshwater on top of the seawater. Because freshwater is less dense than seawater it forms a thick layer rather than mixing. The sides of the mountains are heavily forested and leech tannins into this freshwater layer meaning that sunlight cannot permeate. Deep water species can therefore live much closer to the surface.

Because the rain was getting worse and time was getting on we decided to drive back to Te Anau and the same caravan park that we had stayed in the previous night. The woman at reception asked the guy in front of us whether he wanted a site with a view, to which he pointed at the sheets of rain falling down outside and chuckled. She didn't ask us.

Southern Scenic Route: to Te Anau

2006-09-30T01:41:00.000Z

Out of Invercargill the Southern Scenic Route lost some of it's winding character, but not any of it's scenic value. The mountains reappeared on the horizon. The sheep grazed in flat fields stretching away to the mountains like a scene from Heidi. As the road bent back toward the coast we noticed many windswept trees growing in the direction opposite the shoreline. We crested a hill and were greeted with a stunning vista of the waves crashing against the beach in front of a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. Both of us exclaimed, 'Wow!' at the same time.

We pulled up in the small town of Tautapere, New Zealand's sausage capital. Unfortunately it being a Sunday, the butcher shop that makes and sells said sausages was closed. A fact I found to be quite annoying. At Clifden there is a pretty little suspension bridge. We stopped for some photographs and a leg-stretcher. There is a campsite there which might have tempted us had vehicles been allowed.

In the town of Te Anau, the end of the Southern Scenic Route, we found the caravan park that we'd picked out. Happily it was the first one we came to on the road. It sits over the road from the lake from which the town gets it's name and thus has very pretty views. In town I sated my hunger on a very good venison pie. We spent some time walking by the lake and admiring the view. A small sea-plane buzzed back and forth landing and taking off on the lake, no doubt giving scenic flights around the lake and mountains.

Southern Scenic Route: to Invercargill

2006-09-30T01:39:00.000Z

Being seasoned in the ways of the camper van now, we wrapped up warm against the cold of the evening. Although we didn't have our heater because we were at a non-powered DOC camp site. In the morning Gemma rolled up the curtain to reveal a large male Sea Lion rearing up on the beach. We did take a walk down to the beach, but no bridge had miraculously appeared across the creek in the night.

There were no problems with the directions, as I kept the atlas open on my lap, and besides which there was really only one road to choose. We stopped at a double waterfall, Matai and Horseshoe Falls. The track up to them led through some lovely native trees which were packed with birds. In Papatowai we stopped for Diesel. Gemma complained about having to fill up, something that she has done every time we've had to. I think she thought that the hire cost should include a magic never emptying tank. Papatowai being out in the sticks, the price was higher than other places which caused much muttering.

At Niagara we missed the falls, but did stop at the café for coffee and a cake. I put Gemma in some stocks outside and contemplated driving off, but realised that I couldn't drive and so let her out again. A short way down the road was Curio Bay, the site of a 180 million year old petrified forest. I love stuff like this. With the tide out you can see very clearly the fossilised remains of the trees. Several long tree trunks lying across the rocks are visible, along with many stumps. On many of them the growth rings are clearly seen. It's interesting to think whilst clambering around watching waves pound against the rocks, that in those days the waves would have been coming from the direction of what is now the land. Where the sea is in modern times would have been land. New Zealand was mostly underwater and joined to the super-continent Gondwanaland at that time. There were lots of signs up to the effect of, 'Please don't nick bits of our petrified forest.' This saddened me.

At the crossing of a certain river was a small impermanent settlement of caravans, huts, motorhomes and cars. Our map bore the legend 'whitebaiting', which explained it. The whitebait season is limited to September and by all accounts the Kiwis love their whitebait. They eat it as whitebait patties, a kind of battered fritter. Not something I have yet managed to eat.

At some point we noticed a funny smell so we stopped the van. We worked out after scratching our heads a bit that Gemma had been driving with the handbrake not fully disengaged. After we worked that out we continued on into Invercargill, noticing along the way that the handbrake now did not work. We pulled in to the first caravan park that we found in Invercargill and prepared to call the AA. The owner of the park scratched his chin a little then suggested that we leave it to cool down and see if it fixed itself. This was sage advice. Half an hour later when we tested it the handbrake was holding us firm.

We drove into Invercargill town centre to grab some lunch and have a look around. Normally at 15:00 on a Saturday a town should have some kind of life about it with at least shoppers and afternoon drinkers on the streets. Not so Invercargill, the only life apparent were the surly teens hanging around outside the library. The only thing of note about the town was the profusion of really old cars. They must have a club or something.

Mount Cook

2006-09-23T04:35:00.000Z

(Reference to my last sentence on my last post (Living the dream)) We certainly have been freezing! The last two nights have seen me wearing my coat and beanie to bed! However, these did little to keep out the cold. We tried to move around as little as possible so as not to let the cold air in and I attempted to keep my face warm by sticking it under the covers. Unfortunately, this presented the options of freeze or get gassed. I chose the former! Tim said he was just trying to keep us warm.

I had rung our rental place to tell them our heater doesn't work and they had told us to buy another and they'd refund us. Our first task today was to find that heater. I am now sitting in the van with our new purchase plugged in and it is heaven.

Despite the cold start I am loving it. I have got used to driving the van and also moving around it. Although we can stand up to full height in it, I have still managed to crack my head on the cupboard, but these bumps are getting less as I get used to living in a small space! It is great being able to cook for ourselves (Well Tim being able to cook for me...I do the driving and washing up after all) and make a drink when I want. I really missed these simple things whilst in SE Asia.

Yesterday seemed to go really fast and we didn't actually get that far. From Akaroa we drove to Timaru. We wanted to go there because they had a Supermarket! We needed some supplies and decided just to stay there. It was a bit of a grey day and Timuru didn't look over appealing, but we just spent the afternoon in our new toy (the van). The redeeming feature of the caravan park was that it had a “jumping pillow”, a big bouncy thing which we jumped around on before getting worn out (quite quickly; I need to get fit!) It was great. If anyone wants to get me a birthday present one of these would be great! I'm sure my mum and Dad wouldn't mind if you delivered it to their house! Only joking mum and Roger!

Today was a beautiful day with blue sky. We headed to Mount Cook which was only 200kms away, but somehow took 5 hours to get there! We kept getting distracted by beautiful scenery, mainly beautiful snow capped mountains with very blue lakes in front of them. We had our lunch admiring one of these views at Lake Tekapo. We eventually got to Mount Cook and it's neighbouring mountains, both of which we had been able to see for most of the day. Mount Cook is Australasia's highest peak and is surrounded by 22 other mountains that reach up to 3050m high (and more besides). They had been a spectacular sight all day, but suddenly they seemed to envelope us and we were almost surrounded by them; massive, imposing and daunting beasts. We drove further towards Mount Cook where we were intending to stay at a nearby cheap camper site (no facilities). However, as we climbed out of the van at the Visitor centre we quickly decided against that idea as it was absolutely freezing. I know we were at a mountain which was covered in snow, but as the snow was mainly at the top I hadn't thought it was going to be that cold! There was an icy wind whipping us and neither of us fancied freezing even more than we had been, especially when we had just bought a heater. (which we wouldn't have been able to use at the camp ground as there was no power). We decided to spend a bit more on a camp ground down the road with powered sites so we would be able to use our heater. Sitting in our camper van we can see Mount Cook, snow covered mountains and a lake so I don't regret that decision. We had planned to do some walking round here, but we may just wimp out of that tomorrow if it is still as cold as it was earlier. I don't fancy getting frost bite!

Living the dream

2006-09-23T04:34:00.001Z

I'm sitting here writing this in our camper van. O.k I am sitting here writing this in our camper van wearing a beanie I had to buy for the occasion because, yes, it is cold! However, I don't care as I am finally living my dream of travelling around in a camper van. Ok the van is a tad more luxurious than in my dreams (a heated towel rail?) and it has Ezy (the company's logo) with a lady showing a bit of leg on the side of it, but it is still a mini home on wheels. I can wake up in the morning and see a different, beautiful view each day. I can drive off within a moment if I want to, and go wherever I want; Well, at the moment, as long as it is in New Zealand and on the South Island anyway. And lets not forget the compactness of everything. There is something strangely satisfying about the smallness and well, compactness of a campervan/ caravan. Maybe I should be quiet now

We have been in New Zealand for about 3 days now. I wasn't sure we would make it when we boarded our plane and it creaked, followed by the pilot announcing the delay due to engineering difficulties. With this and the fact that there was no back seat entertainment screen the plane was clearly not up to date and I was dubious we were going to get there. The passengers on board didn't seem bothered. They were more bothered when the head steward informed us that the promised free bar to placate us for the delay would be no longer as the plane was fixed. His information was met with a particularly loud “baaaaah” from one passenger. Clearly, he was from New Zealand. Tim also joined in loudly with the boos.

We made it after all and flying in to Christchurch on our internal flight from Auckland we were greeted with miles of beautiful snow capped mountains. Christchurch itself is a nice town and when we got off the bus from the airport on to Cathedral square there were people playing giant chess, a tram ambling by and people doing the same all against the back drop of the small Cathedral. First impressions were that it was quiet, relaxed and had a nice atmosphere. This view did not change throughout the couple of days we were there. (Apart from when the man outside our window shouted “F***! for what seemed like hours.) I was happy when we found a really nice pub/ restaurant that did an extensive vegetarian menu. We spent the next couple of days wandering round and trying to sort a camper van out.

We finally decided on Ezy campers and picked it up today. I was dubious about the fact that it was an automatic, but got quite used to it fast although I still feel like I am forgetting to do something as I drive and sometimes stamp my foot down looking for the clutch. We drove about 100 kms today along lots of windy roads through lots of green hills adorned with lots of shorn sheep. As I write, it is getting colder and we have discovered that the little heater that came with the van does not work. D'oh! We will have to freeze like proper campers now!

Update on Lily

2006-09-23T04:34:00.000Z

Lily has had her full heart operation. She had it about a week ago. I didn't want to write anything as there was a critical period of 3 days. Fingers crossed she is out of that now. The doctors were happy with her and she has been moved from Great Ormond Street Hospital to our local hospital, James Paget. She is still not feeding, but hopefully that will get sorted soon. Lily wasn't supposed to have her Op until 3 months from now when she had put on enough weight. However, because she was not feeding, her heart was racing and she needed help to breathe they decided to do part of the op last week (I think partly as an exploratory as they were unsure what was causing her heart to race etc; (they thought it was something other than the holes in her heart causing these) However, they did not find anything unexpected and decided to do the whole op. They now feel her symptoms which they were confused about, were her reaction to the holes in the heart. It was awful not knowing what was the matter and knowing that nobody else, including the staff knew what was the matter.

The last few weeks have been so hard. It is hard being away whilst this has been happening. Even though she has had the Op me and Tim are still cutting Australia out so we will be home earlier than expected. (Although we don't know exactly when that will be). The reason we were coming to Oz was to do the Bibbulmun track and we would have been out of contact whilst doing that. I don't want to be uncontactable at this time so we will come back another year and do it.

Weekend in Oz

2006-09-23T04:32:00.000Z

Not many Brits spend a long weekend in Australia, but that's what we have just done! As you know we decided to cut our trip by cutting out Oz, in order to get home for Lily's operation in 3 months time. As we had flights to Perth we thought we may as well spend a few days in Fremantle, suburb of Perth which we really liked when we were here 4 years ago (4 years ago- that's scary)!.

Unfortunately, immigration were a bit dubious about our flying visit. After an overnight flight it was a bit worrying when immigration officers asked us in a “casual” tone, “Oh that's a long way to fly just for 5 days” . At that point I got all nervous and immediately started to feel guilty and bumbled an answer which although was the truth, somehow managed to sound really fake and to make matters worse he misunderstood me and thought I'd said we stayed longer in SE Asia and just thought we'd come to Oz for a little while! At that point he looked “interested”, in a policeman kind of way, and asked some more “casual” questions. He was obviously convinced I was a drug smuggler and when another member of staff noted that we were travelling light I was convinced our number was up. As we walked on to Australian soil I realised that there was no number to be up as I wasn't actually a drug smuggler. Airport staff make me feel nervous. We went through baggage check in Singapore before the flight to Perth and my bag flagged up something on the x-ray machine. They all looked really stern and checked my bag and camera bag, then put it through again. The girl checked again and found out they were my batteries but the x-ray man didn't look happy and she had to persuade him not to put it through again as they were definitely batteries. After that Tim got called over the tannoy which didn't help either. (It was just to tell him his TV didn't work in his chair so we'd been moved)!

Anyway, we made it through immigration and into Fremantle after having to put up and pretend to be amused by the bus drivers Little Britain impressions and witty remarks about what my home town name Lowestoft sounds like. A combination of no sleep and the fact that it was 15 degrees cooler than we were used to contributed to me feeling quite miserable on the journey to Fremantle from Perth. Unfortunately this feeling only grew until we were able to check in. Until that moment we wandered round Fremantle and I thought we were actually in Gorleston. Which is fine, but it didn't feel like the place I remembered and I was worried I 'd been wearing Rose tinted specs for the last 4 years. It didn't help that it was a drizzly thursday morning and everyone was at work except people who like to drink all day. However, it all changed as soon as we checked in. The B&B was lovely and I had a shower and went to sleep. I think every time I feel negative I should just sleep as the world seems so much nicer after!

After the dubious start, we had a lovely few days. We spent them eating (although I still haven't had that jacket potato) and drinking at cafés and bars, walking on the beach ( we went to Dog beach where dogs and their owners hang down the beach together. Last time we were here it was summer and it was packed with dogs and their owners swimming and sunbathing together!) We had a night out, watching a band who played “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes. When we were here last every live band played this song and we were glad to see things hadn't changed. Tim surprised a few people around by dancing hard to it!We walked round the streets, the Market and basically just hung out! It was really nice and a bit of a nostalgia trip as well as we really loved it when we were here last. It doesn't feel 4 years ago though. It just feels like it could be last week now were here.

Our last day was spent in Perth and it was a lovely sunny day with blue sky. After checking in we caught the free bus (I like free things) to the Waterfront area next to Swan river. It was good to see Parrots and Galahs again (hadn't seen any in Fremantle) and I was really happy when I spotted a couple of dolphins in Swan River. We spent the next 15 minutes running down the river bank to follow them as they rounded up fish. The river is right next to the city centre, so I hadn't exactly expected to see dolphins that day! Afterwards we tried to find our way to King's park having to go up loads of steep steps to get there. Loads of people were running up and down them for exercise. It made me feel sick watching them. I felt even sicker when I got to the top!

Kings Park was as lovely as I remembered and it was really nice just wandering round taking photos. That is until the mossies realised I was there. I am NOT going to get paranoid over it....

On the way back to the hotel we dropped into our old haunt, the Hare Krishna restaurant and got a cheap meal for $2.50. All in all we've had a nice few days in Oz.

Southern Scenic Route: the Catlins

2006-09-23T03:52:00.000Z

A 09:00 start was a bit of a first for us, the early to bed early to rise maxim only being half true in our case. We were full of the spirit of the road and ready to see some lovely things on the Southern Scenic Route, so named because it's in the South, is scenic and is a route. Routes are brilliant things, taking you places along a defined path. At least that is the case if you can find them. I had been relying on a combination of the Lonely Planet maps, leaflets from information offices and good signage to navigate. This had worked reasonably well up until this point. We followed the sign for the Southern Scenic Route and somehow ended up headed back towards the centre of Dunedin. We lost an hour driving around in circles until I spat my dummy from my pram, screwed the tourist leaflets up and chucked them over my shoulder. I got Gemma to stop at the nearest petrol station and bought a road atlas. Ten minutes later we were on the Southern Scenic Route and merrily on our way. I swear we followed the signs properly. I think one must have been missing at a crucial point. I was taunted later by signs for the route in the middle of big straight stretches with no turn off. From inadequate signage to over-signage.

Things started to pick up on the route. The scenery was beautiful, hills and the sea drawing near at times and then further away. We left the route for a detour to Nugget Point. A track led to a lighthouse looking out over several rocky 'nuggets' in the sea. From this vantage point we could see New Zealand Fur Seals and Hookers Sea Lions lying on the nuggets. We thought we may have even seen an Elephant seal, but we can't be sure as it was in the water before we got a good look. Nugget Point is apparently the only place on the mainland that all three species live together.

Further down the road we left the route again for another unsealed detour to Cannibal Bay. We had a little bit of a scare when parking up as the wheels just spun round and dug the sand up. Gemma managed to get us out of it though. Cannibal Bay was a lovely spot. A long beach with lovely trees around it and halfway down the beach a group of Sea Lions. We walked down the beach towards them but kept a fair distance so as not to disturb them.

The town of Owaka is the biggest settlement in the Catlins area but it looked to be closed when we went through. We did find the small supermarket open and bought some Speights Old Dark (not bad). Another detour took us to the lovely Purakaunui Falls. After which we doubled back to Purakaunui Bay and it's DOC camp ground. The camp ground is just above the beach and looks out over it. A Kiwi bloke also camped there told us that there were Sea Lions down the beach and over the creek. We sat in the van watching with the binoculars and drinking our Speights. We did walk down to the beach a couple of times to get a different vantage point, but didn't dare brave the cold water of the creek to get up close.

Otago Peninsular

2006-09-23T03:51:00.001Z

Our vague plan for the day was to go see the Otago Peninsular. This juts out into the ocean, as peninsulars tend to, next to Dunedin. On the way out of town we had to stop at a Warehouse store for some gas bottles for the hobs. They also had a CD sale on so I bought some more CDs. A surf music compilation, a Grates CD (great) and a New Zealand Hip Hop thing, Tourettes (not so great). The surf thing and random local Hip Hop thing were only a couple of bucks each so it didn't really matter.

The peninsular was nice. We drove to the end of the road to the Albatross centre. Although, because of breeding season, we couldn't get to the colony. We also had a fruitless search down gravel tracks for penguins and seals. We would be hard pushed to find pengiuns as they only arrive just before sunset and no seals or sea lions had decided to hang out on the beach that day. We did find a lovely little beach, almost deserted, except for a couple of surfers. The sky was blue, the grass green, the baby lambs cute so not seeing any wildlife didn't really bother us.

Although our original vague plan had called for us to move on down the coast from Dunedin, we ended up staying in Dunedin's St. Kilda area at Dunedin Holiday Park. We had pulled over seeing a shop in front of the park and trying to get some chips for lunch. Gemma and I looked at each other and both said at the same moment, 'Maybe we should just stay here.' So we did.

The beach was nearby so we walked down to it and had an ice cream (the rock and roll lifestyle, eh?) When we got back several identical four wheel drives had parked in front of our van and were being cleaned by young army types in camouflage gear. Every time I strayed from the van I would find a huddle of these teenage soldiers milling about.

Dunedin

2006-09-23T03:51:00.000Z

We followed the scenic route out of Oamaru in the morning toward Dunedin. This road stayed by the sea for a fair way, eventually joining up with the main highway. Along the way we passed farms with fields that stretched right to the beach. At Moeraki we stopped to see the boulders. These are a bunch of smallish boulders that have eroded from the cliffs and now stand on the beach. Being cheapskates, we parked in the Department of Conservation car park a way up the beach rather than the visitors centre, thus avoiding the $2 charge and getting a short walk thrown in. As we walked along the beach Gemma was mocking the fact that we, as well as others, had turned up to see a bunch of small stones on a beach. To be honest I was wondering if New Zealand would turn out to be like Australia, where any tiny thing is seized upon and marketed as a 'must-see' tourist attraction. In the end though the boulders were quite interesting, having eroded with some strange vein like patterns, which made the half-buried stones look a bit like tortoiseshells. The Maori have legends saying that the stones are the round food baskets of an ancestral canoe which came to grief on a greenstone collecting expedition.

On the beach was a dog yapping to have a stick thrown for him. We thought he must be with a couple who threw the stick a couple of times, but when they left we realised that he must just be hanging out on the beach wanting people to play with. I had picked up a stick to write in the sand, something which made the dog very interested. My stick was bigger and he looked at me greedily until I threw it for him.

We arrived in Dunedin, parked up at Leith Holiday Park then walked into town. Dunedin was first settled by the Scottish and is supposed to retain a strong Scottish influence. Other than a few street names, the statue of Robert Burns in the square and one old woman's accent in a shop I couldn't really see it. There wasn't a single kilt wearer or bagpipe player in the town at all. What there was though was a town of groovy looking café bars and university students milling round. We had a walk around the centre and a coffee in a rather cool café that reminded me of Mr. Pickwicks in Cape Town. It had banging drum & bass playing and original artwork on the walls. I think we would have stayed longer in the town but we were feeling quite fatigued and the sky was looking like it might open up and dump water on us so we wandered back to the campsite.

Oamaru

2006-09-23T03:50:00.000Z

The heater and our new fleece blanket things were brilliant. Although the van isn't the best insulated thing and so it isn't exactly balmy, the heater keeps the worst of the cold at bay. As it's an oil heater we could leave it on overnight with no annoying fan noise keeping us awake. That honour went to the wind and rain, which started up during the night and rocked the van quite viciously. And I hadn't even written a 'If the van's rockin', don't come knockin'' sign yet.

It was still raining when we got up in the morning so we endeavoured to go outside as little as possible. This led to us both quite comically trying to get from the back of the van into the front over the seats. It wasn't the most graceful manoeuvre from either of us. And pointless too, as I had to get out to unplug the 240v cable and then Gemma had to get out to wipe the windows.

The rain made for some lovely rainbows set against the mountains as we drove away from them back toward the coast. Eventually the mountains became hills and the hills became farmland. We passed some lakes and hydroelectric dams and motored past many nice looking views because there was nowhere to stop. We stopped at a Maori rock art site in the Waitaki valley. The art here is not so well preserved, despite being quite young. The least preserved being the bits that have been hacked off the rock and put in museums.

We arrived into Oamaru and parked up at the 'Top 10' van park. After lunch we had a walk into the town and the harbour area via the public park which backs onto the van park. The park was quite nice although not everything is in bloom yet. They did have a display house that was full of pretty flowers and a pond with some exceptionally fat ducks. Because the harbour is so prominently marked on tourist signs about the place I thought it might be a lovely yacht harbour with nice cafés around it. It wasn't. Being cheapskates we decided to pass on paying to get into the Blue Penguin colony. We went for a coffee instead. Gemma said she felt like Oamaru was a bit odd and scary. It seemed OK to me. The town is full of Victorian era buildings with grand façades, many being old bank buildings a sure sign of former prosperity. The town was apparently a major centre for refrigerated meat shipping, New Zealand lamb having fed the United Kingdom for many years. Today the buildings have been turned over to artists and craftspeople.

Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park

2006-09-23T03:49:00.000Z

Our start was much later than I would have liked because we had a cold and mostly sleepless night again. Plus we had to go sort a heater out. Gemma had rung the hire people the night before to ask about it, they basically said, 'Ooops, sorry. Go buy a new one, keep the receipt and we'll re-imburse you'. We found a Warehouse store, which sells heaters as well as pretty much everything else. As well as a little oil heater, we walked away with some t-shirts, some furry throws for under the sheet, a DVD and a CD. We'd bought the CD because we'd been unable to tune the radio properly, a fact I later found was attributable to the antenna not being extended. The CD we got was only $1.97, by Wondabraa. It's kind of inoffensive House music, not the greatest thing to listen to.

Once we were on the road, listening to Wondabraa and the radio now it was tuned in we hooked inland on SH8. This diary could become even more boring than it already was with repeated outpourings about how beautiful the scenery was whilst driving. This time we were driving right at the snowcapped mountains so they became progressively larger as we went on. Postcard view after postcard view. We drove through several small towns -a main street of new world buildings, small square things with scrolled ironwork. They looked like wild west frontier towns, only with blackboards advertising cappuccinos and panninis. And no cowboys.

We took many stops for photos, such that the 200km or so journey took us about five hours. At times we were shadowing the same set of camper vans, we'd pull in just as they were about to leave, or vice versa. There were a lot of camper vans on the road. Probably more than we saw cars. I wondered idly what it must be like in peak season. Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki were very nice. The lakes are both in valleys carved out by glaciers in times past and are a brilliant turquoise-blue colour, something to do with sediment in the water. Each is framed by a ring of mountains with the requisite trees and rocks that you would expect from this kind of scenery. Many times we pulled up when a bus was disgorging it's load of Asian tourists. This caused queues waiting for photographs in front of particular landmarks, with each person wanting each possible combination of their friends in a photo. One bus stopped and I watched two older ladies running for the right to take their photograph first. It was like the rage you see at jumble sales sometimes. In the Lake Pukaki visitors centre there was a poster advertising a $70 Lord of the Rings tour. Nearby are the locations for Gondor, Entwash and the White Mountains. The poster stated that these were on private land and so not normally viewable. It seemed to me like what you would get for your money was a car ride out to a field and then the right to stand in that field for a bit. I saved my $70.

We arrived at the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park by late afternoon. Mount Cook is the highest mountain in its chain, and in Australasia for that matter. It was named after, the ever-present in these parts, Captain James Cook. The Maori name of Aoraki, which means 'Cloud Piercer', is well deserved, although it was it's neighbour next door that had most of the cloud when we were there.

We had planned to spend the night at the cheap, no facilities campsite in the National Park. When we got out of the van into the cold biting wind we began to reconsider. It was freezing and given the fact that I'd just bought a new heater and wouldn't be able to us it without electric I decided that we should go to a proper campsite. Two nights shivering and sleepless were enough. After a couple of quickly snapped, and probably blurry because of the shivering, photographs we turned around. A short distance back the way we'd come was the Glentanner Park Centre (http://w ww.glentanner.co.nz/). This was a campsite and chalet operation on the Northern shore of Lake Pukaki, attached to a helicopter ride company. We found a site, plugged in, turned on the heater and watched the sun go down over the mountains.

Timaru

2006-09-23T03:47:00.000Z

We discovered, in the evening, that the small fan heater in the van was broken. This led to a very cold night and very broken sleep. I almost felt like getting up and hugging the heated towel rail at one point. We sluggishly arose and got on the road by 10:00.

If anything the road going back the other way through Banks Peninsular was even more scenic. The same lakes, harbours, inlets and sheep covered hills were all around but hovering on the horizon were the snow covered peaks of the South Island's mountains. I did a double take at first. The midday sun had caused the mountains to be very washed out and the snowcapped peaks looked almost like a line of cloud at first glance. Realising that clouds aren't that angular my brain was able to adjust itself and see them as mountains. Gemma remarked that they looked painted onto a sheet, a la Roadrunner.

We had a stop in Dunsandel which looked to be a tiny roadside town. The Dunsandel roadside store was quite nice, with some nice food options. We were cheap though and only bought a coffee, making some cheese sandwiches in the van instead. 13:30 we arrived in the town of Timaru, our rest stop for the night. Chosen solely because it seemed like a good place to stop and the Lonely Planet said it had a Pak & Save supermarket. Because the place we were staying, another 'Top 10' park, was only 500 metres away we parked the van up before going shopping.

I bought a couple of tall bottles of a local brew, Tui, which styles itself as an India Pale Ale. It's drinkable but not the best I've ever tasted. After having a glass we availed ourselves of this parks best feature, the Jumping Pillow. This is sort of like a big trampoline thing but concave in shape. We knackered ourselves out with about 5 minutes of jumping around on it. It was fun.

Camper van-tastic

2006-09-23T03:45:00.000Z

We had hoped for a good sleep right through until the morning but we were scuppered by a man outside our window who was either drunk or had Tourette's syndrome. The only word I could make out in his constant diatribe was 'Fuck'. There was a lull though and we thought he'd gone. No such luck, just as we were getting to sleep, he started up again. At some point we did drift of, either because he left or just drifted into the background noise. It was stupid o'clock in the morning when we did get to sleep though. Reluctant to waste the whole day dozing and squinting at the light coming through the, frankly useless, curtains we got up around 11:00.

Christchurch seems like a nice town. The sky was blue with fluffy clouds floating around and the chill of the previous day had mostly gone. Gemma was happy because we had a jacket potato for lunch from a stall on the market. We had a pleasant day just meandering around until we realised that we really ought to try and book a camper van, since we wanted to get one for the following morning. In Fremantle we spent a good few hours using the free WiFi of our accommodation to try and work out the best camper van deal. We had strained our eyes looking at site after site and reading fine print after fine print. I tabulated some of the cheaper options until we had narrowed the field to two possibilities. Unfortunately getting to Christchurch threw a slight spanner in the works in the shape of massive amounts of leaflets from many different hire car companies that we hadn't seen on-line. After checking out some of these we started to eliminate them for one reason or another, finally settling on the two that we'd originally short-listed plus a backup third option.

Our hostel booked for one of the short-listed candidates so we asked them to get a quote for us. We booked with them and arranged to be picked up from the hostel at noon the next day. The hire cost was to be fairly expensive as we'd taken out a zero excess insurance policy. Our reasoning being that Gemma wasn't used to such a big vehicle, plus it also covered us for tyre and windscreen damage -the most likely things to occur, and not covered in the other options. Gemma was a bit nervous because the van was a) an automatic and she'd never driven one before and, b) a van and she'd never driven one before.

At the hire place after the t's were crossed and the i's dotted we got the van, and realised that it was close to brand new. We were quite overawed with how posh the van was. A Toyota Hi-ace diesel van with the usual conversion: sink and cooking area, cupboards, removable table and fit together bed. Added to this was the DVD player (we have no DVD's though), the microwave and that most essential camping item, the heated towel rail. The van has a house battery system for lights as well as 240v power at campgrounds, for the microwave and the towel rail.

We set off out of the hire place, with Gemma's foot stomping an imaginary clutch and her hand going for a non-existent gear stick. She seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly though and we were soon motoring along. In the wrong direction. I missed the sign for a turning we needed until it was too late, realised that I didn't have the correct map on my lap and so we drove kind of randomly until I was able to get us back on the right road. Because we didn't leave the hire centre until late afternoon, I thought we best try and go somewhere reasonably close to Christchurch for the night. The place I chose was Akaroa on the Banks Peninsular. The drive down to the town was stunning, the road winding through and up hills and past harbours, inlets and lakes. The weather was a little bad in places, but that only made the shafts of light illuminating hills across the valley more stuning. I had to remind Gemma that she couldn't just admire the view, especially given the windiness of the road. If she had been apprehensive about driving a large vehicle that wore away very quickly and she was totally in control.

The day was drawing on by the time we parked in the town of Akaroa. We made it a flying visit, just running into the supermarket for supplies. Up the road from the town is a camping park, one of the 'Top 10' chain, and where we'd decided to spend the night. The cost for a camping spot was on the high end at $28 a night, but we figured being somewhere easy with powered sites would be best for the first night while we got to know our way around the van. As the sun went down over the mountains and the harbour I got busy making a simple vegetable soup, the first thing I have cooked myself in a couple of months at least. Although it was simple it was tasty. We spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how everything in the van worked and drinking hot chocolate. In the world of camping early nights are the norm, something, by this point, we were looking forward to.

Onward to New Zealand

2006-09-23T03:44:00.000Z

Because we'd had our onward flights brought forward we needed to get the tickets revalidated at the airport. For that reason we asked our Perth hotel to book a reasonably early bus to the airport. We wasted the early part of the day just mooching about in the centre of Perth watching the people go by. We were relieved when the bus turned up and it was a different driver than we'd had on the way into Perth. Neither of us were in the mood for his over jolly bantering and Little Britain impressions.

At the airport we located the Air New Zealand office only to be told that they would sort it out downstairs when check-in opened, so we needn't have come over so early. Oh well, we weren't the only ones. After having a coffee we wandered down to the check-in desk to see a fairly large queue already waiting. The flight wasn't for another three hours. The revalidation was painless, the nice woman just writing on a sticker and sticking it over our tickets. The plane was late arriving because of engineering difficulties at Auckland. It was cleaned and we were allowed to board. As we found our seats Gemma's face dropped. 'There's no seat-back screen,' she said looking rather glum. 'My god, no Nintendo, is this the 80's or something,' was my response. On Air New Zealand economy class its a big screen up at the front and you watch what they play. I looked in the magazine and found that the film would be Nacho Libre. Fine, except that we saw it at the cinema in Kota Kinabalu a couple of weeks beforehand.

The captain announced that Perth's engineers weren't happy, we could be waiting an hour on the tarmac. He told the flight attendants to open the bar while we waited. Unfortunately Perth airports engineering team obviously know the hitting it with a spanner technique, because ten minutes later we were told we would be on our way. The bar was cancelled, much to the dismay of the majority of passengers, myself included. If the truth be told I was almost hoping for a cancellation leading to being put up in a nice hotel and fed for a night or two.

I have complained enough about flights in general and overnight flights in particular so I won't go too much into it other than to say I spent the 6 ½ hours trying unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position for my head. Needless to say not much sleeping occurred.

Although our bags had been tagged through to Christchurch, because Auckland was our first port of entry, we had to collect them and clear immigration and customs. New Zealand clearances are, if anything, more in depth and harrowing than the Australian ones. The first guy didn't seem to like us much. He asked a lot of questions about what we were doing and didn't seem too happy at our lack of pre-planning. 'What are you planning in New Zealand?' he asked.
'Hiring a campervan and touring.'
'You have it hired already?'
'No.' At which point he tutted. That was typical of the exchange. Maybe we looked shifty.

The biological threat bloke, didn't like the look of Gemma's shoes in combination with the fact we'd been in South East Asia in the last 30 days. He made her take them off and disappeared into a little room. When he came back the soles of the shoes were gleaming and clean. Eventually they seemed satisfied that we weren't coming to work, smuggle or destroy the forests of New Zealand and let us in.

We walked over to the domestic terminal impressed by the sunshine but aware that it was a little chilly with it. A short wait later and we were flying off toward Christchurch. The flight was a short one with the only thing of real interest being the sighting of the snow capped peaks of the Southern Alps (I think), the stand in for the Misty Mountains in the Lord of the Rings films. It really was quite a beautiful sight, stretching out for miles of craggy white covered rocks.

Perth

2006-09-23T03:43:00.000Z

Because of flight schedules from Perth to New Zealand we had to wait another day in Australia. Our Fremantle accommodation was booked up for the extra night so we decided to go into Perth itself. We booked a hotel in Northbridge, the Acacia, and got the train over from Fremantle. After checking in we caught the free CAT bus down to the riverside. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. As we walked down the beside the River Swan, Gemma spotted a break on the surface of the water. A pair of Dolphins were hunting fish together, one looking like it was keeping the fish in a perimeter whilst the other quickly darted after them.

After we lost track of the Dolphins we continued down the riverside, passing small lakes filled with birds. The normal pedestrian overpass into Kings Park was closed because of a rock slide so we were forced to climb Jacobs Ladder. We huffed and puffed our way up the steep staircase feeling a bit feeble as fit people in shorts ran down and then back up past us. One even reached the top then dropped to the floor and into press-ups. He hardly looked to be breaking a sweat, whereas we were gasping for air at the top.

Kings Park and the Botanic Gardens is a lovely place. Lovely trees, flowers and water garden. When we came to Australia a few years ago we spent our last day in the park. My memory cut away the intervening couple of years, so that it really was almost like yesterday that we were there. Kings Park is probably one of the best places in Perth to take photographs, with it's flowers and it's view of the city. So that is what we did for a while until a swarm of Mosquitoes decided to attack Gemma. We left the park then and walked back into the city and over into Northbridge. In Northbridge there is a Hare Krishna restaurant that serves take away curry and rice for $2.50. Last time we were in Perth we ate there a number of times. We couldn't resist this time either, it was tasty.

Gemma's South East Asia Summary

2006-09-10T07:56:00.000Z

Things I won't miss about SE Asia: The humidity, the smelly drains (oh how I won't miss them) the bites and having to smother myself in “Off!”, the frustration of crossing the roads (Too much traffic) soggy leaves and boiled rice (Jacket Potatoes here I come).

Things I will miss: The Randomness,(You can't really predict a day in SE Asia) the laid back, friendly attitude (in most places) The wildlife, the cheapness (I can't help but feel good when two meals and drinks come to 1.50)

A lot of people rave about South East Asia so I was curious to see for myself what all the hype was about. For me, South East Asia got under my skin. (sometimes it literally felt like that especially when we'd been walking around all day in the heat and breathing in the drain smells.) I believe there is a certain way of life and charm to SE Asia which can't necessarily be seen on the surface. It took me a little while to get beyond "the things I won't miss" (see above) but when I got past those things I fell for the people who, generally have been very friendly, laid back and warm and the pace of life.

I feel like this part of the trip has been an introduction to Asia and I would like to do another trip, taking in other countries. Singapore was a gentle intro to SE Asia, being quite westernised, although looking back I thought that Singapore was exotic when we first arrived. However, when we returned to Singapore I couldn't believe that I felt like that! It seems very normal although I did have a new found appreciation for the cleanliness, especially of the toilets!

Like Tim, I had never really considered Malaysia as a destination other than to transit through to get to the rest of SE Asia. However, it turned out that it is a lovely place and we spent longer here instead of venturing to other countries like Laos (maybe next time). The people are lovely the scenery is lovely. Generally, a nice place. I have heard people comment that Malaysia as a SE Asia destination is tame and too nice. I suspect this comes down to the fact that the Malaysian people generally, are very trustworthy and warm. Myself, I value being able to trust people and not being ripped off and as far as I can tell this seems to be the thing that seems to separate it from the other countries. ( Heard a lot of dodgy reports about Vietnam) O.k most Malaysians speak English so therefore it makes it easier to travel and I guess people want the challenge. I have to admit that the language thing was a bit frustrating when I tried to ask for my dinner in Malaysian and they only understood me when I asked in English!

The beaches I had expected to find in Thailand we found in Malaysia; the East Coast providing text book tropical islands which haven't yet (and I hope this remains) been scarred by distasteful developments. The development that has happened seemed to be in keeping with the environment, unlike Thailand where we found unrestrained development and it could have been 18-30 resorts! To be fair though, we didn't go everywhere so those paradise places may exist. We ended up going to resort places (combination of weather in other parts, meeting people and laziness).

As soon as we entered Thailand I decided I really liked it. I think it was because it felt so new and exciting. I couldn't understand any of the language, signs etc. However, as time went on I began to change my mind. I felt jaded after only being there for a week or two, I think again, because of the places we went. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed myself it's just "The land of smiles" which Thailand was hyped to be was not evident and I wondered what everyone had been raving about. However, after going to Patrick and Noi's wedding and meeting genuine Thai people, I fell for Thailand. I think we got to see the real Thailand and I would love to go back. I also felt chuffed that I learned a few words of Thai!

Borneo (Sabah) was strange and I had mixed feelings. I knew about the Palm oil plantations, but seeing it in reality was a bit of a shock. We did a lot of bus journeys and so got to see miles and miles of seemingly endless, monotonous palm trees (whenever there was a river, I would excitedly nudge Tim, much to his amusement, as it was a welcome relief from the plantations!) The wildlife and jungle is obviously what tourists go for and I was no exception. The protected parts were the places we wanted to visit, but the visitor numbers to these are limited, which is good, but because we generally just turn up we did not get to see certain things. What we did see though was beautiful. The elephant encounter was amazing; a goose bump moment and Proboscis monkeys and Orangutans are ace!

Whilst in Borneo we were approached a few times to have our photo taken. Once was in the capital city of Sabah, Kota Kinabalu by a family who had been staring and nudging each other before approaching us to ask for our pictures! We found it really funny and strange as we assumed that western people were quite common place. Obviously not as much as other places. We had our photo taken by several members of the Malaysian army who were based on a small island we went snorkelling off. It is a strange feeling and made me feel famous!

So, all in all I enjoyed SE Asia. It was a strange experience at times and I would love to go back to visit other countries and the parts we missed.

Freo

2006-09-09T11:22:00.000Z

Our perceptions of Fremantle changed for the better the following day. The weather was turning from cold to pleasantly warm, with most of the cloud clearing up and the sun poking its way through. In combination with the weekends arrival the weather began to bring out the cool people of Freo and the cappucino strip began to buzz. This was the Fremantle we remembered. My memory was sparked off by so many things, it seemed like just last week that we visited last. We ate fish and chips at the waterside restaurants and pizza at our favourite Aussie pizza chain, La Porchetta. We had a drink (proper beer!) in the Little Creatures brewery, a favourite place from our last visit. We lost most of one day to raging hangovers, the result of watching a band, Felix, at the Newport. They were pretty good but did too many covers for my liking. We did manage to take a walk on doggie beach before having to crawl home for a lie down. Gemma was continuously, 'ooohing,' and, 'ahhhing,' over the dogs. After being in South East Asia it was weird to see dogs on leads and not just running around randomly on the beach. I bought a new camera after much deliberation about which one to get. Harvey Norman, a department store here, was closing down the Fremantle branch so I managed to get a pretty good price. Sitting in the park eating self-made sandwiches and watching teenagers roll down a hill was quite nice too. It really was like we were just here last week.

We had decided to make our shortened trip to Australia into a nice long weekend away and managed it fairly well. Coming from South East Asia the price of food and beer was quite a shock but we soon got used to it. The Australian segment of our trip is being counted as a bit of a treat and so we aren't keeping to any kind of budget for it, not that we really did in Asia anyway!

F F F Freezing

2006-09-07T07:21:00.000Z

The flight from Singapore was only around four and a half hours long but because it left at 01:30 was a little bit of a nightmare. I think when we booked the flights we were being cheap and so expressed a preference for overnight flights to avoid accomodation costs. I'm now thinking that may not have been too wise because we tend to suffer from the not sleeping and end up losing a day to fatigue. A think many other people must dislike night flights as the plane was empty and the staff almost outnumbered the passengers. I didn't feel too sleepy to start with so I played a little Nintendo and then watched some TV shows on the entertainment system. I realised I've forgotten how to do the special moves on Street Fighter II. When I finally did get my head down, stretched out with Gemma's legs sharing the middle chair with mine, I had been asleep for maybe ten minutes when the stewardess woke me up to give me a hot towel. I tried again. This time I managed five minutes before breakfast was served. As we'd only eaten supper about two hours previously I could only manage a few mouthfuls. In any case, with all the waking up going on I ended up not sleeping and then it was time to land.

The landing was a little shaky due to the wind as we approaced Perth. I think this wind partly accounted for the freezing temperature. We'd been expecting a drop in temperature coming from South East Asia but not quite to this degree. At one point later in the day Gemma's hands turned purple. We've been following the, much better written, blog of a British couple, who seem to be places a few days before us. Their Perth entry was illustrated with photos of lovely blue skies so we had high hopes. These hopes were dashed against the rocks of our despair though. We also noted that the shuttle bus driver had irritated them somewhat by keeping up a constant Little Britain impression through the journey. We caught the same bus. With the same driver. He was friendly enough, it's just that at the 23rd repitition of, 'Yeah ah know', it begins to grate a little.

The bus was into the city, which wasn't even where we wanted to be, but we just figured we'd get away from the airport. We had the driver drop us at the train station and caught the train to Fremantle. This was after letting the first, sardine packed rush hour train, and the second school special pass us by. After a coffee we located our accomodation, far too early to check in, dropped in our bags and went into Freo (as the locals call it). I don't think walking round on a dreary weekday morning is the best way to do Fremantle justice. The place is usually quite vibrant and hip, with a pavement coffee house thing going on. On a cold and miserable Thursday morning though all of the hipsters are at work, no-one is sitting outside the cafes and the only people around are OAP shoppers and the odd drunken Aboriginal family. We felt afraid that we had built up an image of a groovy Freo that didn't really exist. As we trudged around in the cold past the $2 shops we wondered what was going on.

Time stagnated and moved with the pace of treacle until check in time. We walked back to the B&B wanting nothing more than a shower and bed. By that point Gemma was greedily eyeing the cardigans in shop windows. I think the cold was getting to her. We were happy that the room was made up already and the proprieter Barry showed us in to our very lovely room. It cost a fair bit more than we would usually pay, or remember paying on our last trip to Australia, but it is very nice and is still at the lower end compared to some other options. As Gemma slept I checked out the local listings papers and found out that there is loads of really cool stuff happening in Freo and Perth. Only it was all listed as happening around 3 weeks from now.