Chrispie33..... Go no-where... - 'cause we've bought a house....

Project #28 - landing cupboard

2012-01-02T16:55:00.000Z

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Christmas...

2012-01-02T16:43:00.000Z

The tree & check out the decorations! :)

Project #27 - new door handles

2012-01-02T16:35:00.000Z

Wasn't going to post this but it took sooooo long, it's worth mentioning! :) New door handles throughout the house... that's 13 in total...

Project #17 update...

2012-01-02T16:31:00.000Z

JW - here's a photo of the TV thing all finished - the coving (at the top where it meets the ceiling) and skirting board on - all painted and TV in place!

New Years bike ride....

2012-01-02T16:25:00.001Z

....it was a bit muddy, a bit cold, but very nice!

(note the shorts in January)

Project #14 - Update...

2011-12-04T17:32:00.000Z

Stuff is growing!!

Project #26 - the floor...

2011-12-04T17:28:00.000Z

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Project #25 - Landing wall...

2011-11-13T18:09:00.001Z

Still waiting on two photos to be printed, but pretty much there....

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Project #24 - The Rhino!

2011-11-13T18:03:00.000Z

Check it out JW! :) Love it! Looks great on our side board... Plus i can see the Christmas decorations staying out after Christmas as they look great too!

Project #23 - Remove old floor...

2011-11-13T17:40:00.000Z

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Project #22 - Halloween prep!

2011-10-26T21:04:00.000+01:00

Pumpkin #1...

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Project #21 - more lounge stuff

2011-10-26T20:59:00.000+01:00

Lounge looking more like a real lounge!

Project #20 - SOFA's!!!!

2011-10-13T19:52:00.000+01:00

After 5 months (!!!) of not having sofa's - we finally have them!! Yeah!

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Project #19 - Trees

2011-10-13T19:47:00.000+01:00

So we had these trees to put on the wall.. somewhat more involved than anticipated!

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Project #18 - Paint Lounge

2011-10-13T19:36:00.001+01:00

So - lounge plastered means lounge needs painting. Finally (finally) decided on colours... grey & grey & grey. :)

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Project #17 - TV cabinet / lounge focus point

2011-09-15T09:46:00.000+01:00

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Project #16 - Flat ceiling & door tidy up!

2011-09-15T09:39:00.000+01:00

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Project #15 - Hall Cupboard

2011-09-08T16:55:00.000+01:00

Hall cupboard now done...

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Project #14 - Spring prep...

2011-09-04T21:29:00.000+01:00

Guess we'll have to wait 'til next spring to see if the 135 bulbs (!!) planted yesterday grow... update in spring i suppose!!

Project #13 - NEW DOORS!

2011-09-04T14:19:00.002+01:00

So this has been a bit of a long running project...

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Project #12 - Space blanket installation....

2011-09-04T14:04:00.001+01:00

Insulating the loft - what a grown-up and sensible thing to do... Now it's all silver and shiny!!

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Project #11 - removal of 'Return of the wasps'

2011-09-04T13:57:00.000+01:00

Don't let me lead you to believe I had anything to do with this - all Rob. Ewww.

It is quite cool, but not something we want in the loft...

There were hundreds of wasps... how did we not notice the nest earlier??

A rare escape....

2011-08-21T17:01:00.000+01:00

... from the DIY to enjoy the english sunshine. It actually rained most of the day up until about 20 minutes before the ride... PERFECT.

Ahhh, return of the wasps....

2011-08-21T16:39:00.000+01:00

Having removed them from the compost (and subsequently the compost itself) we spotted more at the front of the house... Now one of us has to either go up there and remove the nest, or find someone to do that for us....

Project #10 - Catch the rain....

2011-08-21T16:32:00.000+01:00

Yet another "this'll be easy" job. Humm, suppose it didn't take too long:

Project #9 - Garden tidy up...

2011-08-14T16:44:00.000+01:00

So, garden work this weekend. Here’s the befores and afters – there’s one fence panel left to paint once the shed goes to its new home.

Big improvement I think! Never want to paint a fence panel again. :)

Back fence...

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After:

Shed side...

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Left hand side...

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From upstairs...

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In the garden....

2011-08-07T17:59:00.000+01:00

.... we've watched the wasps coming and going in the entrance to the compost for about a week now - i've managed to prize of the front of the compost with a stick and now we have to treat the nest with some foam apparently. I'm not holding out much hope of that working!!

Project #8 - removing old doors & archway...

2011-08-05T20:11:00.000+01:00

... to make way for the "NEW DOORS" - which arrive on Tuesday....

Before:

Half-way:

And After:

And a during for good luck:

WTF?

2011-07-31T19:57:00.000+01:00

See photo. This is on our window ledge... WTF?

Project #7 - Front garden tidy...

2011-07-31T18:22:00.001+01:00

We are actually doing about 20 different things but i'm avoiding putting half finished stuff up to confuse the issue. This weekend we wanted to tidy the front garden so we aren't stepping over things trying to get in the house. And even we are struggling to convince ourselves that it's "ornate" grass, rather than just grass that needs pulling out. Anyways - before's and afters below....

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After:

After all that hard work i think it's time to check out the cider festival at the local pub.... :)

Project #6 - 'erbs!

2011-06-19T14:53:00.000+01:00

Here's the "Huh-erbs" as we call them in England. :)

Projects #3-5

2011-06-19T14:30:00.000+01:00

Project #3 - "the big light"

So we figured a nice light in the blue room to make a bit of a feature... sadly - i didn't measure ceiling height when measuring if it would fit. So it totally fits width wise, but hangs at what can only be described as... "neck height". It's staying for now, until we get a replacement and whilst Rob figures out why there are 7 wires instead of 3!

Project #4 - Stuff in the blue room

Having found the one missing box full of the cables and remaining things for the PC etc - stuff is now in the blue room and the computer is working again. This room works well if you are about 4 foot. :)

Project #5 - Tidy grass out the front

I've had total grass edge envy of next door's grass edge so i've had to do ours...

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Project #2 - Painting "The Blue Room"

2011-06-08T21:56:00.000+01:00

Hey Jen! So - the second project is painting the new ceiling and the wall - Lost Lake & Blue Reflection, very nice! And now aptly renamed "the blue room". :)

Next project we have to unpack everything and fit the new light etc. Then - finally, we might actually have got one room done?! crazy.

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First Breakage...

2011-05-31T15:16:00.000+01:00

Floor is not bouncy... :(

Project number 1... Study Ceiling....

2011-05-31T13:20:00.000+01:00

Hey Jen!! OK - see below for the good old english "artexing"- not sure you lucky american's have this joy in your houses!!

So, first Rob pulled off the tape that was supposed to be securing the ceiling boards to each other - and that made this nice mess. Rather than re-artex over the top, we decided to get rid of the artexing all together in that room by replastering the ceiling. Before / afters & during below! :)

Now we have to wait for a week until it's all dry before we can paint - will post the new paint job hopefully next weekend!

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In the nest... update one (no interent connection still)....

2011-05-26T10:55:00.000+01:00

Hey Jen Wolff!

So - see photos below.... crazy huh?

This is the front and back of the house....

These are the inside photos:

These are our new flowers in the garden - thought i would preserve them on camera before i kill them! :)

Update?

2011-05-08T15:10:00.000+01:00

2011? Time flies.

We've still been travelling / taking nice vacations - but 90% working. And, the latest plot to hinder future travel plans?? Buying a house.

We are at a packing stage at the moment in our current house - see below:

It's slow progress - we leave in about 10 days time so there is (in theory) plenty of time yet. Unfortunately when packing the shelf up, there was some Bulmers discovered and that has hindered the rest of the days packing.... though the shelf did get finished (ish).

There are a few things we will miss about this rental (namely the cost!) - here's a nice example of what we won't miss:

The house needs all sorts of work doing to it - which is a bit a shame seeing as i don't want start saying things such as "no, we aren't going anywhere this holiday, we are doing the lounge". So we'll see how that goes - good luck with that Rob. :)

10 days to go!

Costa Rica!!

2009-01-23T11:15:00.000Z

(Still) Having a few issues with the photos right now in blogger... will try again tomorrow night.

Well – we started off with a couple of days on a farm near Siquirres, which is about 2 hours North East of San Jose. We did well with getting a local bus there, costing us only $4 each! We even managed to get off at the right stop and not have our bags stolen (mainly because I was watching the baggage compartment like a hawk every time we stopped!). We had some nice local food before getting a taxi (quite a unsuccessful journey!) to Brian’s farm up towards the mountains and Turrialba area. It’s not really a farm as we would imagine here in the UK – it’s more an area of land that you can occasionally farm things from – there were some unbelievably tasty lemony orange things on the trees outside the guesthouse we stayed in and we hiked to where some of the locals were chopping up a tree that had fallen for wood (massive tree, very impressive). So we spent the days lazing around in the hammock – watching the birds and listening / trying to look for the frogs. Brian is ‘the’ guy to go to in Costa Rica if you want to see some serious frogs – which I did (and Rob was very soon to realise he did too!). We went out on two hikes – both at dusk / beginning of the night and within about 5 minutes managed to spot the one frog I’d definitely wanted to see (red eyed tree frog) – apparently they are really common here – although the ones we saw (about 5 or 6 in total) over the days we stayed with Brian were the only ones we saw the whole holiday (though we could hear some in the other places we stayed, we couldn’t see them). We hiked further into the farm on the second night and found the second frog I wanted to see but didn’t think we would – a glass frog – the one we saw (the one below) is an Ilex glass frog. We saw some other very cool frogs (the red eyed stream frog being my third favourite) and all round had a good frog spotting relaxing start to the trip!

From Siquirres we then took another local bus to Limon, then another bus down to Puerto Viejo, which is almost as south as you can get on the Caribbean coast without hitting Panama. It’s a very relaxed place with a bit of a reputation, and being offered hair braids and drugs within about 10 minutes of getting off the bus you realise why it has that reputation! Pretty place though and it was nice to see the Caribbean Sea again after so long! The place we stayed at was cool; we had our own little bungalow with a nice hammock and table etc. We also had a nice little bird watching bench around one side of the bungalow which we sat at one morning getting photos of the humming bird. We spent some time on the beach, playing in the waves, checking out the beaches further down the coast etc. We were told that this was one of the best places to see a sloth (they have two-toed and three-toed sloth’s in Costa Rica) and although I spent a lot of time gazing up into the threes that Brian had told us they like the most – we didn’t see one. I was gutted as although you can see them anywhere; this was supposed to be the place! Anyway, we got a taxi to the bus station to get our nice 4.5 hour bus journey back to San Jose and one the way we saw this one in the road!! Such a funny creature – it totally just stopped, looked up at the taxi, and then continued to walk around towards the trees!

So back for another crappy night’s sleep in San Jose before our ridiculous 6am pickup for the rafting trip. We were on the four day trip which meant a day of rafting into the lodge half way down the river, then two days hanging out at the lodge and doing trek’s etc, then another day of rafting out. The first day’s rafting was pretty tame (call II and III rapids), but the last day’s rafting out was going to be III and IV rapids so that was the exciting day! The lodge itself was beautiful, all made of wood and three stories high – which was a little worrying from a structural point of view, especially taking into account our lovely stone bathroom up there on the third floor! Great food and cocktails at 5pm every day it was a great place to spend Christmas. We did a day trekking out to a farm on horses (clearly the best ‘four-wheel-drive’ vehicles about!) – as most of you know, Rob and I are not a fan of getting around by horse (although for some reason we keep ending up on horse treks) – we both spent most of the day scared half to death, there were some very steep parts to the trek and I think I would have been much happier to get off and walk most of it! We trekked out to a Tilapia farm and did a little bit of old school fishing (both Rob and I caught fish and had them for dinner) then around to Jose’s (the horse owner) house for lunch and to check out Jose’s collection of snakes and a cayman (stayed well back) then back to the stables and a nice walk through the forest back to the lodge. Nights were spent eating and drinking until about 9pm when they turned the generator off and everything went dark! For Christmas day we walked up into the rainforest and then followed a river back towards some huge boulders that had been made into a cool natural waterslide by the river water. So we grabbed the rice sacks and had a few goes – lots of fun! The last day rafting out was really good – we ended up in the raft with a bunch of male Americans that were really into the whole macho thing. Rob and I sat at the back of the raft – which is a change for us as we usually sit at the front, and I’m glad we did as the macho Americans did most of the paddling work and when you are at the back you really have to get right into the rapids before you see how big they are – and they were BIG. Lots of fun though – the guide we had was pretty game for a laugh and tended to take us the hard way into and out of rapids and we only got stuck once!

Another crappy night in the crappy San Jose hostel and then we were on the bus North to Arenal to see the volcano (hopefully) and try the canyoning that had been recommended to us by people on the rafting trip. Arenal was probably the first proper ‘touristy’ place we went – plenty of expensive restaurants and bars, and most of the prices started to appear in US$ rather than Colones. No visibility of the volcano on the first day, the second day we went canyoning and it was great fun – a lot less scary than I thought it would be – some photos below but they really don’t do the heights of the waterfalls any justice! The first one was 100 ft high and the second one was 250 ft high. Crazy. Had some great food afterwards and went into the ‘town’ with a few of our fellow cayoners for some beers, then met up with them again for dinner. Our final day in Arenal and we finally got to see the volcano! Very nice it was too – all sorts of stuff coming out the top. We spent the day in the hot springs / spa place – very well organised and super pretty, very strange climbing into hot water when it’s so hot outside though – and in my head streams are always cold! Had a lovely massage in the spa that removed all my aches from the previous day’s canyoning and a fabulous lunch in their restaurant complimented by a margarita! Early night for an early start of our dodge journey from Arenal to Monteverde via Jeep-Boat-Jeep.

Well – apart from them picking us up an hour late, the journey wasn’t bad at all – very long with a typical stop off at a mate’s restaurant / shop for us all to buy overpriced food / stuff! Our place in Monteverde was in a great location, we were able to walk into the town of Santa Teresa (which seemed more touristy than Monteverde) and also walk to the cloud forest reserve, and have a bunch of nice restaurants, cafes and bars close too. Monteverde was again very tourist orientated but we got to see some more frogs, and had a nice walk about the cloud forest – although we did see more wildlife at the café outside the cloud forest than we actually saw in the forest – but, I guess animals are smart and they know humans feed them! Saw some more humming birds although I think the photos look much better with real flowers in rather than the ugly plastic feeders! The second day here we got to do the ‘official’ zip line canopy tour thing – it was a bit cattle like – everyone in, take the money, everyone on, everyone off etc. It was very very cool being that high up above the canopy and it really gave you a great view of just how massive the forest is – you are basically 500 + feet above the ground on a bit of wire, and I think the top speed is 40mph. Add in the 65mph winds and it was a very exciting morning!! The longest of the lines was about 750m – great fun, highly recommended! That was New Year’s Eve so we went out and had a few celebratory drinks and a nice meal – very grown-up New Years eve, no throwing up or anything! The next morning we were up early and off to the reserve – we decided we were close enough to walk there - but I think we must have guessed where we were on the map wrong because it was a quite the hike! We walked up to the continental divide – saw a few birds but generally not that much, we saw much more wildlife at the visitors centre where the visitors were feeding the animals!! Saw some more humming birds – managed to get extremely close and now understand why they are called humming birds.

From Monteverde we took the supposed ‘easy’ route to Montezuma – this was a tourist bus that advised saying it made getting around Costa Rica easy – having taken local buses up to now we thought we would treat ourselves – especially as this trip involved a local bus, a ferry and then another bus. Anyway – something went wrong with the booking and they didn’t pick us up. As we had the receipt our hotel person told us it was their responsibility to get us to Montezuma. So we sat around for a while waiting to see what happened… eventually a taxi appeared and we started off towards the ferry port. It’s a fairly scary journey down to the port as you go from a reasonable altitude (5600 ft) to sea level, along what appeared to be ridges and saddles between the mountains. I say appeared to be because of the speed we were travelling, I was just happy I wasn’t getting a closer look else I think I would have been even more scared than I was. Eventually we got down to sea level and paved roads (seatbelt on then for the driver) and we figured that either the driver was in a really big rush, or he was trying to get us to the port by a certain time. There were some scary moments in the town where he was just overtaking (on the wrong side of the road) the whole line of people waiting at the red light, then when he got to the front of queue he’d just jump the light! We arrived at the ferry port at 10.58 – just in time for the 11am ferry! The ferry was OK – packed but it was nice to be on the sea again! We picked up the bus on the other side of the ferry and everything was going smoothly until we pulled over to side of the road with a blown radiator! Luckily Rob and I were prepared by this point for the fact that something else might not go right so we calmly got the beers out of our back packs and started drinking! Eventually we got to Cabano and then got a taxi to Mal Pais and to the hotel. Mal Pais was beautiful and dusty. Very dusty. But some awesome sunsets and lovely beaches and great places to eat (we had some unbelievably good argentine chicken and some great pizza!). We had a fun couple of days just exploring and then we hired a quad bike to check out the beaches a bit further away – lots of fun driving it on the beach! We decided that we’d done enough cheapo travel and so we got the small plane back to San Jose rather than the 6 hour bus and then a taxi to our very cool and crazy hotel. I think you could probably stay for a week in that hotel and notice something new every day. Very arty / decorations / sculptures etc. Lovely room and probably the best food of the trip (bar the argentine chicken).

So all round – a great trip! The only thing I would recommend – do not fly with Delta!

Big News...

2008-11-24T13:00:00.000Z

... i've bought a new camera... the Nikon 7900 has finally got to the point where bringing it out held together with an elastic band is a little embarressing. I'm still keeping it as i don't plan any time soon to invest in a housing for the new camera... So - any photos from this point onwards are taken with the Canon G9.

Updates..

2008-11-09T12:27:00.000Z

As the task of updating all the missing bits from the blog is a massive one - i have decided that i will get on and update as from now and then if i feel inspired i'll backlog things.

This weekend we went up to Didmarton and then to the national aboretum. Although we might be a little late for the majority of 'turning' we had perfect weather...

New Year's Resolution...

2007-12-02T17:30:00.000Z

.... is to update the blog and then keep it up to date... things to add....

1) South Pacific Photos and log (i have it still somewhere)
2) Return to England..
3) Trip to Amsterdam to visit Benji with Andy-Pand & Rob
4) Weekend Wakeboarding in Canada
5) Weekend in Germany
6) Weekend in Belgium Mountain Biking
7) Africa Trip
8) Arctic Circle trip
9) Xmas in England for the first time in.... forever!

Chrispx

Tonga, Fiji & Cook Islands

2007-04-09T19:29:00.000+01:00

All coming soon. Back to real life in England then. BIG CHANGE. :)

Waitomo – Coromandel – Auckland – Northland – Auckland

2007-04-08T17:58:00.000+01:00

Well – the caves turned out to be a bit more involved than either of us had actually anticipated. Our first clue to this was the dripping wet wetsuits we had to put on. Not impressed by that at all! We then had a 10-minute lesson on how to abseil before getting clipped on and sent down a small dark hole in the ground. It wasn’t a massive descent – 30m – but they had the rope set up to accommodate all the people in the group. Unfortunately for me that meant that I had to use the same rope as the 15 stone Danish guy, which resulted in my fear quickly turning into frustration and me having to ‘bounce’ up and down on the rope to get myself to go down at all. After this first bit we then clipped onto a flying fox and slid into the darkness admiring the glow-worms.

Our response to the 30m abseil and then the flying fox pretty much told us what we had suspected on the way to the caves. We were completed and utterly activitied out. Having jumped from one place to the next over the last 2 months, fuelled by experiencing the next adventure, we were exhausted. Bouncing along the river in a tube, the dark cave full of glow-worms provoked nothing more than a mild whine at how our wetsuits didn’t fit and the water was freezing. Nothing whatsoever mentioned about the spectacular hidden world we’d bought our way into. All we could think about throughout the 5 hours it took was how long was left and how soon we could get out of our wetsuits and help ourselves to the free soup. I’m sure under different circumstances we would have raved about it. As it was, when presented with a choice near the end of the trip (option one – climb up the waterfalls, really difficult as you have to climb up, then shuffle through the top of the waterfall where the water is trying it’s hardest to push you back down or option two – walk out the other way) my question of ‘which way is the quickest?’ dictated that we start the waterfall climb. We left after our soup taking only seconds to decide – no thanks, we don’t want the CD with the photos on. Sam & Andy did the same trip - so if you want photos, look on their website!

We drove off into the night looking for somewhere to stay but somehow managing to miss the turn for accommodation in each town we passed through! We eventually stayed in a holiday park in the middle of nowhere, which meant that we paid the same as usual but got a sink and a TV in our room (ah, the small things). The next day we carried on towards the Coromandel and found Whitianga and a hostel with a room for two nights. We killed time for two days, purchasing food for our camping trip, drinking, eating and finishing off the shopping for Christmas stockings.

On Christmas Eve we left for Stony Bay, right on the tip of the Coromandel, the car weighed down with food and drink. So weighed down in fact that as we drove the last 20km of gravel road the bottom of the car would occasionally scrape the ground, causing an horrific noise and invoking panic. The road was hideous and an accident waiting to happen. It was the kind of road that you should beep your horn when going around a corner to warn anyone coming in the other direction, the only problem being that if you did this, you’d have your horn on all the time. Now, Rob and I have been to many countries between us, and seen or experienced many of the roads and drivers in those countries and without a doubt New Zealanders take the lead in the terrible drivers list. Baring in mind we are drawing on experiences such as Lanzarotti bus drivers hurtling around corners on the edge of cliffs to the point where I threw up in my mothers sun hat and then stopping without warning to have a chat with someone else going the other way, Japanese drivers, Canadians, Americans, British, Cuban taxi drivers determined to get down the skinny streets of Havana as fast as possible while you hold your breath hoping it’ll make the car thinner. Kiwi’s are still the worst. In some ways you have to admire them, they have purchased their 4WD, it’s expensive and fast and is built for driving off-road. Which is effectively what this road was. What I think anyone’s neglected to tell them is that they aren’t the only one using the road, and they may have brakes and maneuverability on the loose gravelly roads, but not all cars do. You immediately understand why some of the road signs have the speed limit on and then the words “it’s not a target” written underneath! When anyone passed us we would be temporally blind for a few minutes because the speed they were doing kicked up all the dust, we flip-flopped between being glad we were in a hire car (as the scraping noises got louder and surely more damaging) and petrified someone was going to hit us and we would have to pay our $3000 excess. Never have I been so glad to see a campsite!

We set up our little tent, cooked some very un-Christmas Eve like food, drank one or two of the many bottles of alcohol and slept. Christmas day we thought would bring out the festive spirit in our fellow campers but everything was pretty quite and dull, until about 10.30am where people did seem to get a bit more festive. By then we had finished off a bottle of champagne so it may well have been that of course! We spent the day doing nothing, the bay was beautiful, but the wind was wicked and the temperature of the water very un-inviting. We continued to finish off our red wine supply, read our Christmas books, watch the first few episodes of season one of the Family Guy and have a very un-Christmas day dinner of chicken tikka masala!! Boxing day we got up early and threw all the stuff in the car and drove the worst of the 20km of gravel before stopping at a pay phone to call home. Most people seemed to be heading the same direction as us so it wasn’t nearly as scary on the way down, plus drinking all the red wine, beer and champagne had lightened the load on the car so it wasn’t scraping the gravel any more! We headed for Auckland for a quick stop and a lovely Thai meal (thanks Rob’s Mum and Dad) before heading up to Whanganui where we would do our last planned activity in NZ – diving the Poor Knights islands.

In Whanganui we stayed in a lovely hostel by the Abby Caves called Little Earth Lodge. Finally a room big enough for us to unload the car and sort out our rubbish! Again we managed to do nothing for a few days before organizing the diving trip, which was really good. Very very cold and has put both of us off cold water diving for a while! Lots of kelp and nudibranch and eels. On the second dive we went into a cave and you can pop your head out in an air pocket and take out your regs, have a chat etc. I found it a bit strange, especially as you look at your computer and it tells you you are 9m below the surface. Very strange. But it was well worth doing even though we only lasted 40 minutes on the first dive and 30 on the second because of the cold! After the diving we decided that we would head north and try and stay in Pahia for the night.

It was like Blackpool, but without the illuminations. I couldn’t believe how much it had changed since I was last there. With a quick check at a few hostels we left with a “good luck” from one of the hostel owners after I had turned down his offer of a double room at $120 a night and headed North. We found a run-down, full-of-weirdos campsite with cabins for $40 just outside Kirikiri. Bargain. The next day we drove further north landing in Pukanui and finding a very nice homestay farm place with a lovely room and good kitchen. We spent the night watching Star Wars (a very seasonal film!) and chatting with fellow guests (a Kiwi-English couple escaping Wellington for the holidays) and eating leftover food (tinned tomatoes).

The next day we decided that we would go horseriding. We booked it through the farmstay woman and got an indication of what it would be like from the fact that when we got to the town that it was in we had to go to the local shop and they would give us directions to the actual place. It was SO much fun. Rob had a horse that was aptly named ‘Stumpy’ and mine was called Troy. Being the second time Rob was on a horse he got the smaller one, and it being a totally relaxed kiwi experience we had no helmets or anything silly like that, just a wild horse that had been caught off the beach and tamed and a branch of leaves to urge him on if he happened to stop at any point! We rode thorugh the bush where our guide Brandon told us that you can pretty much eat anything that moves in there, and that it was all delicious. We went from the bush to the sand dunes and then over onto the 90 mile beach to have a run about and splash in the water. All good fun.

From the horse riding we headed north as we were half way to Cape Reinga anyway – we had a quick lunch stop and took some photos then headed back down the coast for ‘the farm’ where we were to spend New Year.

To the left

The tip of New Zealand

Lovely place to stay, all very friendly and relaxed, we just pitched our tent and joined in the festivities (when it had stopped raining enough for us to get out the car). We managed a trip to the beach, a bottle of champagne, a couple of bottles of red & a crate of beer, a lovely sweet & sour stir-fry and a communal dinner of spit-roast chicken & various sides. There was some frisbee throwing (until the dogs got involved) and some lounging around in the sun. All very pleasant!

The last sunset of 2006

After New Year we made our way down to Auckland for our flight out to Tonga on the 6th. For our last night we spent an horrific night in what can only be described as a small stinky jail. It wasn’t actually a jail but I did think that auckland’s actual jail was probably nicer than this place. Top tip for Auckland? Do not stay in Surf ‘n Snow Backpackers – it sucks.

And to Tonga…

Updates....

2007-01-05T09:22:00.000Z

Well, my intention was to spent tomorrow (our last day in NZ) updating the blog, sending stuff home and packing before flying to Tonga in the evening. Having called Air NZ to confirm our flight, we actually have to be at the airport at 7.30am tomorrow morning - not evening - slight oversight on my part!! So the last installment of adventure New Zealand will have to wait!

We have 2 weeks in Tonga, 2 weeks in Fiji, a week in the Cook Islands and a week in Tahiti before flying to LA then London. Updates to follow late Feb!

Chrissie

Christchurch – Cheviot – Kiakoura – Picton – Wellington – National Park – Rotorua

2006-12-22T00:53:00.000Z

So we left Christchurch after another two nights at Casa Steve and hit the road for Cheviot, just south of Kiakoura. The dolphin swimming was booked for the morning that we wanted to go so we had some time to kill. After a few beers and catching up with Nath from work we go to Cheviot and decided we could go no further! We stayed in jail for the night – a cool 1900’s jail that they have made the two cells into rooms – they did add an extra window, but thoughtfully left the original window, complete with bars and original door, complete with little hatch to talk to the criminals through!! Very amusing!

So we got to Kiakoura to be greeted by rain and wind – our hopes for 5am dolphin swimming diminishing quickly. We got up at 5 and gave them a call – the trip was on as they had less wind than expected – so we rushed down there, got suited up in 7mm two piece wetsuits, with hood, and jumped on the bus to the boat. Once on the boat we headed out to one of the bays where they usually see dolphins, but after about 10 minutes they decided it was too rough to continue and we headed back to the shore, got back on the bus to the base, got out of the 7mm two piece wetsuits, with hood, and returned to our little room to watch dvd’s for the rest of the day as the weather was just foul. We re-booked for 5am the next day though and we made it to the bay second time. Just after we had got into the bay the captain said the swimmers should all start to get ready as the dolphins were about – then they blow this big horn and you all start jumping off the back of the boat into the 14oC water!

The dolphins are totally wild, so you have entertain them to get them to stick around, they don’t get fed by the company, so they don’t hassle you, they are just interested in you. It’s all very strange – they like it when you duck dive down (no chance of that happening in water that cold) and they like to swim in circles around you and stay about longer if you spin around looking at them while they swim around you. You are also encouraged to make noise as they find that interesting. A great experience and we are both so pleased we got to go – well worth the waiting around. By the end of it we felt a little sick… beware – treading freezing cold water for 30 minutes in a swell while spinning around and making noises can make you feel sick as a dog!
The photos don’t nearly do this amazing experience justice, but you get the idea…

Set your camera on continuous photos and take about 50, you’ll end up with one or two with dolphins actually in the air!

Unfortunately the visibility wasn’t great, it looked better than this in real life!

So from Kiakoura we headed north to Picton. We had planned to walk the Queen Charlotte Track, but we both managed to pick up some sort of bug from somewhere and only managed to do a tour in the car. Very stunning area...

From Picton we got the ferry over the Cook Straight to Wellington – it was super windy, but a calm crossing (thankfully!) – despite the wind, when the captain announced that he had seen Orcas off to the front left of the ferry everyone braved to wind to try and catch a glimpse – sadly they had moved on already! In Wellington we visited Te Papa – the national museum and then headed north to Wanganui to try and find out about canoeing the river there.

We got there as the information place was closing but the nice man let us in anyway and sold us a 3 day adventure down the Wanganui river in a Canadian canoe. We had another couple of hours drive up to National Park where all the tours went from and we were treated to some spectacular views on the way…

Mount Ruapehu

The three days canoeing were perfect! The weather was awesome sunny & blue skies for all three days (resulting in burnt heads / knees / feet etc!) and it was very entertaining being in a big open Canadian canoe rather than the regular sort. It made for interesting times when we came to the rapids!! We camped the first night and then stayed in a hut the second night. Over the three days we covered about 90km of river, a slab of beer, a bottle of wine and mountains of food – a job well done.

We did a side trip (about a 40 minute walk) to ‘The Bridge to Nowhere’, which is a bridge to nowhere, in the middle of nowhere! It was supposed to be an area developed for farming, but by the time the bridge was finished everyone had moved to greener pastures and now it’s just there, in the middle of nowhere!

A constant source of amusement throughout the trip – the feral goats!!

We decided to stick around in Nation Park for the next couple of nights and do the Tongariro Crossing, hailed as the best one-day walk in NZ. I did this walk last time I was here and it was wicked so I’m glad we got the chance to do it. The weather was perfect – again (don’t worry, we are currently paying for those 4 days of perfect weather!) and there are too many photos to chose from! A great walk if you get the chance to do it.

From National Park we then entered the rainy days again and didn’t get a good look at Taupo Lake and the nice view you get there in the sun, or the good views of Rotorua. We had decided to go an see an old school friend of Rob’s the next day so we had to find something to do for the morning. Rob picked white water rafting (our 3rd time this trip) on the Kiatuna river. This one is special because you raft over the highest commercially rafted waterfall – a whopping 7m (~21ft). Now I wasn’t too excited about this – but the trip is only 45 minutes so I figured it would at least be over quickly!

There were four of us in the raft with two guides. So one of the guides was in the back – then it was the other guide and Rob, then the next couple and then me at the front. On my own! I wasn’t very happy about it!! But once we got in the raft and got going I wasn’t too bothered, that was, until we came to the bit with the waterfall. He took us near the edge and then got us all to stand up to have a look – you couldn’t even see the bottom where you would land – very scary. I totally tuned out when he started saying about how you have to go into a little ball if you fall out of the raft as the waterfall will suck you under and blah blah blah. I wasn’t very happy about being in the front on my own at this point. Anyway – over we went and upright we stayed, although you can see from the photos we disappeared for a bit!

After that bit it was all OK – for one of the rapids I even got to sit on the front of the raft with my legs over front bit, holding on with one hand, the other in the air – just like a crazy bull-rider! Sadly no photos of that bit! All in all an excellent activity and I will certainly recommend it to people!

Me and the other chick doing the Titanic as the guides made our raft ‘surf’ the rapid!

After this we called in at a 4WD place where we had a go at scaring the crap out of each other by driving up, down and through scary things!

So we had a lovely evening visiting Rob’s friend, a chance to wash things (everything smells clean!) and sleep in a real bed (ahh, the luxury!) and now we are back in Rotorua before heading to Waitomo to ‘do’ the caves tomorrow afternoon.

Other stuff:

We went to watch the new James Bond film – despite thinking the new dude wasn’t James Bondy at all – it was awesome! Go and see it if you can.

We have changed our ticket (mainly due to us wanting to go to Tonga, the Fiji coup & the great deals to Tonga!) so that we don’t have as much time in Fiji as we did (one month down to two weeks) – this left us with a spare two weeks so we are heading to Tonga to explore! Less than three weeks until we start our South Pacific tour!!!

It’s the 20th today and we still have no plans for Christmas, we are not even sure where we will be! This must be the most un-Christmassy I have felt ever! We have booked diving for 30th Dec, but again have no idea where to spent New Year, holidays like this should be scrapped when you are traveling!

Well, now it’s the 22nd and we have a vague plan of what to do for xmas, we are hoping to get booked into one of the DOC campsites here on the Coromandel afer purchasing our tent and trying it out (successfully) last night in Hahei. Photos to follow! Have a great Christmas everyone!

Motueka – Collingwood – Heaphy Track – Westport – Punakiaki – Franz Joseph – Makarora – Queenstown - Christchuch

2006-12-05T10:05:00.000Z

Able Tasman was at it’s best for two of the three days, the weather was awesome – and it was probably for the best that the majority of day two was cloudy as otherwise we would have had some serious sunburn! It was a great three days – and although the company we went with messed up our booking and instead of staying in the huts we ended up camping, we both ended up thinking that it was probably best that they did mess it up as by camping as we got to stay in some small campsites that you could only access by the water. Very cool.

Me and the kayak!

Split Apple Rock.

View from the lookout at campsite number one.

Both very glad that we waited for the weather to clear up as the scenery was stunning in the sunshine. We saw some gorgeous little bays, lots of seals, lots of birds and finally – some lovely sandy beaches. It’s the first time in months (and literally months) that we have been able to wear our boardies for 3 days in a row!!

Seals!

View from campsite number two...

Beach - a real beach!!

After some recuperation in Motueka we decided that we would do the Heaphy Track (another of the great walks) – it’s the longest out of all the great walks (~85km) and takes a good four days to complete. We arranged with Stray (after three phone calls) to pick up our bags in Motueka and us in Westport (460km away) in four days time and started the walk. The first day was quite easy – the second day was long (27km) but an awesome walk through the red tussock fields that seem to go on forever. The third day was a nightmare of 6 hours of solid rain, where we discovered: 1) why most people walk in waterproof boots, 2) that the ‘waterproof trousers’ we had bought could only live up to the ‘trousers’ part of their name and 3) we did not like hiking in the rain… especially for 6 hours. But despite 1, 2 & 3 we also discovered that we although we didn’t like walking for 6 hours all soggy - we could, and weren’t that worst for wear of it afterwards. The last day was a nice easy walk and because we left early we got the best of the weather (it was nice and sunny for when we walked along the beachy bit and then we were under the trees when it started to rain!) and a lift to Westport by another couple that left early too – saving us a nights stay in the little town you end up in after the walk and $80 in bus fares! Result!

Red tussock land.

Lush west coast.

West coast inlet.

After a brief visit to the brewery in Westport we got picked up by the Stray bus and then managed to persuade the driver to drop us in Punakiaki rather than Barrytown for the night. A lovely little hostel by the beach, a nice pub meal and a sleep, then we were off to Franz Joseph for our second attempt at the Heli-Hiking.

After waiting two days the sun finally came out – which transformed a dreary little town into a stunning alpine village. Finally we could see why people would choose to live there! We booked onto the last heli-hike of the day and sat around watching films & the weather until check–in time.

It was all very ‘cattle’ like – everyone in – everyone pay – everyone out, but once up onto the glacier I think it was worth the money. Although almost everyone I’ve spoken to who has visited New Zealand has hiked on the glacier it’s still one of those things that you rarely get the chance to do (especially if you live in Europe). It’s also one of those things that won’t always be there for you to do either. I can highly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance – the photos don’t nearly do it justice.

Me with talonz on...

Climbing up an ice crevice...

The Mighty Glacier...

Me in a frozen tunnel..

From Franz we went to Tuatepere for the night again – via Lake Matheson see photo below! - and then onto visit Wanaka quickly before heading to Queenstown for the next couple of nights. We found a very nice little hostel (by accident) that charged the same price for a double as most of the other places in NZ rather than the extra $15 they seem to put on everything because it’s Queenstown! After an evening of pizza and beer we were ready to do something adrenalin creating the next day and Rob got to pick the activity. He wanted to paraglide off of Coronet Peak (one of the mountains around Queenstown), but when we called the company it was a mainly handgliding company who had one paragliding pilot. So I decided I would handglide having already had a go at paragliding-ish post sky-dive a few years back.

Lake Matheson

It was all very strange, you get set up and then run quickly off the edge of a ridiculously big mountain. I hadn’t really thought about handgliding before so I made the assumption that the handle/bar in front of you was where you ‘hold on’. It’s actually the ‘steering wheel’ and you are harnessed from your middle to sort of dangle. Very weird as it was a natural instinct to hold on and felt really silly when you didn’t! We had perfect conditions and actually climbed up to a higher altitude than where we jumped off at one point. The landing was very scary as you just sort of go head first towards the field and your feet drag along the grass. I wouldn’t say that I’m about to run out and buy a handglider – but it was fun and the views we had that day were awesome. The few photos and video that they took for us are pretty funny; we both went at the same time so we are in each other’s videos too!

Me running off hill...

Just after take off..

Me flying and smiling.

So now we are back in Christchurch trying to figure out what we are going to do for the next four weeks before flying out to "we're-having-a-military-coup-Fiji". Christmas and New Year are looming ever closer and we still don’t know what we will be up to! Diving sounds like an appealing option as long as I keep my mind off the water temperature! It’ll all work out I’m sure.

Franz - Makarora - Queenstown - Te Anau - Steward Island - Christchurch - Kiakoura - Nelson - Motueka

2006-11-18T02:06:00.000Z

Well – we’ve had a little more luck with the weather! As soon as we got about an hour or two from Franz the skies started to clear and the sun proved it was still there. We stayed in this backwards out of way place with only one bar (what a change!) called Makarora, which in itself was very pretty. We work up early to go jet boating only to find out that they won’t go unless there are four of us (there was just Rob and I) so we ended up going for a walkabout in the forest for an hour.

Makarora in the morning

Ferns in the forest

After a quick stop in Wanaka we headed to the ‘extreme’ capital of NZ – Queenstown! Last time I was here in Queenstown I didn’t do any of the activities (apart from drink and eat) so this time we decided to cover the Shotover river as neither of us were that fussed about bungying. We did a jet boat and then took a helicopter up Skippers canyon and white water rafted down.

The jet boat was awesome. It goes stupidly fast and spins around and goes scarily close to the canyon walls. All good fun! It was freezing though – not that it made much difference to us as we were going to be in a raft within the hour! The helicopter ride up the canyon was wicked – especially as the pilot pointed out the road we would have had to take otherwise – a windy skinny dirt track on the edge of a very steep cliff face! Then it was about an hour and a half of white water rafting down – after the Tully the rapids were fairly tame, but the fact that the water is 4oC makes you super scared of being flung in the water (unlike the Tully where you get in voluntarily several times!), it was fun, but it cold and an hour and a half was just the right amount of time! One of the reasons we wanted to raft the shotover was the 170m tunnel at the end that you raft through – it was the best bit!

After this we met up with an old school friend of Rob’s and had a few more drinks than we needed and then got on the bus at 7am the next day to get to Te Anau – a good place to start if you want to do any of the walks in the area.

How cool do we look?!

After finding out the Milford track was booked until about March, and the Routeburn was waiting to be bombed to remove the risk of avalanche, we settled on the Kepler. We cheated on the first day and instead of walking along the beach from the start we took a water taxi to the end of the beach and started on what is known as the ‘grunt’. Straight up for about 3 hours from sea level to 1000m. After we popped out from the trees we had great 360 degree views of the surrounding area (Te Anau Lake & Manapori Lake) – from here it was a short 45 minutes to the hut – our first NZ hut experience! The hut was awesome! It was quite quiet (we are at the very start of the ‘tramping’ season really) so we had a section of bunks to ourselves – I can imagine it gets quite nasty when it’s full of hairy sweaty snoring hikers! We cooked ourselves some dinner and then went off with two fellow walkers to find the nearby caves. All natural and not restricted the caves we wicked – I was having Harry Potter flashbacks and therefore didn’t go too far in to explore but Rob and others went right in and they went on for ages! Very cool.

First hut of the walks!

The second day was the worrying day – the weather hadn’t been forecast that great and we weren’t exactly the best-prepared people out there! Because you were fairly high (around 1000-1400m all day apart from the last bit), any rain forecast for the area would have been sleet or snow where we were – great! We were very lucky with the weather though, and although it was SOOOO windy (I think I actually got blown over about 3 times due to the extra weight of the pack and gusts of wind coming exactly when I lifted one leg!!) we – thankfully – didn’t get too much rain / snow / sleet. We took the 10-minute side trip minus packs to the summit of Mount Luxmore and then spent most of the day struggling along in the wind. It was extremely dramatic scenery – snow covered saddles between two mountains that you knew you had to walk along – some of them had very long drops either side and with the wind I was constantly nervous of getting blown off the track!

The mighty Mount Luxmore waiting to be climbed!

It's very windy, very cold, and we are very tired - but we at the top of the highest mountain as far as we can see!

Look closely on that snowy ridge. People. This is when we realised we'd have to walk along that snowy ridge!

Look closely on this photo too and you can see the track

We did a side trip after dinner again – to a waterfall this time, we got to see a nasty possum on the way back to the hut – all very pretty, all very peaceful. The last day we decided to skip the last hut and walk straight out – it made it a really long day (23km) but it was worth it to know that at the end we were going to get a nice dinner and more importantly – a shower!! By the last hour we had both had enough and the aches and pains had got worst but we made it to the end and got the bus back to town.

A nice waterfall

By far the hardest bit of the walk was from reception of the holiday park to our room – all of about three and a half minutes, but after having sat and waited for the bus for about 45 minutes and then sat in the bus for another ten, both of our bodies had decided we had walked enough and didn’t want to walk anymore!!!

It was a great trek, and we covered about 50km in the three days and gave ourselves a huge confidence boost to do more walks. How very quickly you forget the agony it was to move about the day after we got back!

We spent the next few days recovering and then hopped back on the bus for the Milford Sound cruise and onto Tuatepere. We had THE best weather for the Milford Sound cruise, blue skies and hardly any wind – made a lovely change!

Me on the boat.

One of a million Milford Sound waterfalls.

We stayed overnight in Tuatepere and managed the early start to get to the farm to shear a sheep, play with a lamb and a calf and watch the working dogs do their stuff. A very entertaining morning and well worth getting up early for!

Sheep!

After the farm we went down to catch the ferry over to Stewart Island for our next walk – The Rakiura Track – another one of NZ’s Great Walks.

It wasn’t as good as the Kepler and it was a lot harder on people who have bad knees (i.e. us) because of all the steps you have to go up and down. Most of it is a boardwalk type track so we spent a lot of time looking at our feet as it was wet, muddy and slippery – I’m sure we missed some of the scenery because of this!! We had all sorts of weather – luckily whenever it was snowing or hailing or raining we were under the trees so we didn’t get too wet! The morning after staying in the first hut we walked along the beach for a bit and saw dolphins!!

On the beach!

Me crossing the first of three extremely scary bridges!

One of the huts.

Rob looking dashing in his hiking gear!

One of the many beautiful bays!

We then spent a couple of nights on Stewart Island not doing all that much before heading back on the bus.

We expressed from Stewart Island to Christchurch – with an overnight stop in Dunedin. We then slept on Steve’s floor for a couple of nights before heading off again on the bus (our free tickets allow us to go around the South Island as many times as we want in a year) up to Kiakoura for a stop (we didn’t do anything apart from decide that next time we come through Kiakoura we would do the dolphin swim) then got the bus to Nelson.

I'm ashamed to admit i've forgottne where this is.. somewhere between Dunedin and Chrstchurch that's stormy. ;)

Moraki Boulders on the beach...

A few yellow-eyed penguins on the beach - these guys are really rare so we were super lucky to have seen them!

Now – Nelson is the one place in NZ that gets the most sun of all NZ. And – just like last time we got to Nelson, it was pissing down! Not just a shower, but a full on, good 48 hours worth of heavy rain. We were supposed to head through to Marahau, but we hopped off in Nelson as the place the bus stops in Marahau is a bit…. Primitive (to say the least) so we opted for a warm cosy backpackers instead. We then hopped back on the bus the next day and we are now in Motueka.
We’re booked onto the kayak trip (3 days up the coast, then a water taxi back) starting tomorrow 8am – very excited, the weather is perfect right now (sunny!) and if the wind drops just a little then it will be the best weather ever! So fingers crossed it blows itself out tonight.

We got back to Christchurch about 3 weeks before we planned to, so we might do a couple of extra things on this go round. Next big stop is the glaciers to do the heli-hike, another weather dependant thing. I predict some more waiting coming up!

Until next time, keep smiling!

Picton – Abel Tasman National Park – Barrytown – Hokitika – Franz Joseph

2006-10-29T00:53:00.000+01:00

Well – we are getting rained out all over the place. We are currently in Franz Joseph where it’s stopped raining for about 20 minutes of the 20 hours we’ve been here! Because of the rain we have opted to leave the heli-hike for now, and hopefully we will get back here and do it next time. We also left the kayaking because of the rain – by the time we get back around it will be in December so the weather should be better. Should. Hopefully.

So that’s what we haven’t done, but we did managed to do a few things too, we had a nice two day stop in Barrytown which is in the middle of no-where on the West coast. There’s only one good thing to do in Barrytown and that’s make your own knife. It’s an all day affair and you start with a rusty piece of steel, a few brass bits and a lump of wood – after hand forging, grinding, shaping and sanding you produce an awesome knife. So far we haven’t had much use out of them, though I can say mine slices a tomato very nicely!

Birthday in Barrytown! :)

Cold forging the knife...

Sharpening and shining..

Half done...

Starting kit and end knife!

Sunset from the restaurant..

After Barrytown we stopped in Hokitika to visit Steve’s Dad & Frances – their B & B is lovely! We spent a few days doing nothing, eating some good food and drinking a few bottles of red. One of the days we headed to a local guy who carves jade and carved ourselves some jade things – took all day and by the end of it most of us had totally crossed of ‘jade carving’ as a potential job! Much harder than it looked, and so much harder than the bone carving we did in Christchurch. On our last night in Hoki we had a nice Indian meal and followed it by a trip to the cinema to watch ‘Snakes on a plane’. The most ridiculous film ever made, without a doubt. Hoki is a small place so we were two of four people watching it! Like having a private cinema!

Hoki...

A whitebater catching his (more likely other peoples) dinner....

And now we are waiting for the bus to take us down to Haast for the night before heading to Queenstown tomorrow. The weather has to get better for us to attempt any of the walks we have planned so fingers crossed everybody!

Christchurch - Kiakoura - Picton

2006-10-21T02:07:00.000+01:00

We are currently in Picton – work has finished (yes!) and we’ve had the obligatory drunken leaving BBQ and said our goodbyes to friends made while we’ve been in Christchurch. We are just waiting for the next Stray bus to take us to Abel Tasman national park! We are hoping (weather permitting) to hire out a kayak and camping gear and kayak around the national park for a few days.

So far the bus has been fine – today on the way to Picton we stopped at a ‘secret, just discovered’ seal nursery that I distinctly remember from the Magic bus six years ago – maybe secrets last longer in New Zealand?!

We spent the last few days in Kiakoura walking walks, seeing seals and watching whales. The seals were at the seal colony just out of town, lots of seals lazing around on the beach having their photos taken! We went twice and the second time did the coastal walk around to the other side of the headland and back over the top – very nice walk, with the normal spectacular views New Zealand seems to offer everywhere we go. The whale watching was great; we got to see two whales (sperm) and then a bunch of Dusky dolphins, which made the trip - not that the whales weren’t amazing, but they aren’t the most active of creatures!

We took part in a pub quiz on Wednesday night and managed a respectable joint-triple-second and last night we wandered down the campsite and had a few drinks with Nathan & Mel who are staying in Kiakoura for the long weekend (labor day or something).

Team Rock Paper Scissors 2006..

2006-10-11T22:14:00.000+01:00

A big thank you to Duncan, Helen, Jono, Maxi, Rob, Joseph, Andy, Katie and Steve for coming along to the bar for the last three weeks and joining in the rock, paper, scissors contest on Rob's behalf!

A special thanks to Duncan, Helen, Rob & Steve who came along every week! Even though after the first week, Duncan was so sick he had to have a couple of days off work (must of picked up a bug, couldn't have been anything to do with the beer, right Duncan?!!).

We will hopefully be back in Christchurch in about a month of so to catch up and bore everyone with photos and stories of the South Island! :)

Day trip to Rakaia Gorge...

2006-10-11T21:30:00.000+01:00

At the weekend we headed towards Methven and Mount Hutt to walk up the Rakaia gorge - it was a great walk, a little introduction for Rob and I for the planned walks we have when we leave Christchurch. The scenery was really amazing, the mountain with the snow on and the blue sky and the brilliant blue of the water - a great walk.

This week is my last week in work - I finish tomorrow (Friday 13th... oooOOooo)! Very excited about that! We have a leaving BBQ on Sunday at Steve's (we've got the Pimms and gin & tonic!), and then a couple of days to get ourselves sorted before we hop on the Stray bus on Wednesday morning. We managed (3rd time lucky) to win a second bus ticket for Rob, well - we didn't actually win it - despite three weeks of practice and trying our team only made it to the quarter finals, but the girl who did win it didn't realise you couldn't sell it and therefore had to give it away and I was the first one there! A huge thank you to her (far too excited to actually remember any names!) for that. So we both got free tickets around the South Island! Great news as that's a saving of $1600!!

Wednesday we head off to Kiakora for the weekend - and then it's around to Able Tasman National Park to do some kayaking & camping. Photos of everything to come, of course.

The sun is just about to come out and Rob is just about to realise that his jumper on the fence behind him is in bird poo! :)

We stopped here for the view, an apple and a banana...

The Rakaia River...

Day trip to Akaroa

2006-09-25T00:24:00.000+01:00

One of the few things left for us to do here within the Christchurch region was Akaroa – It was beautiful! We picked a really nice day to go and although it clouded over towards the end of the day it was still warm. We had a nice coffee by the sea and then hopped onto a harbor cruise to see some of the local wildlife.

Rolling green fields and the bays in the background..

We got to see a couple of small blue penguins and some seal pups (very cute!), sadly we didn’t see any of the hector dolphins that everyone sees here as they were having a few days off (thankfully we had opted for the dolphin watching tour rather than the dolphin swimming tour as I’m sure I’d be much more miffed if we’d togged up in smelly wetsuits and had motored around the harbor for an hour looking for the dolphins!). A great day out all round really.

That, in the middle of the photo, believe it or not, is a tiny blue penguin hiding under a rock! Awwwww.

And that's a seal. :)

Sunday was spent spending money on stuff for traveling in a few weeks – I can’t wait! It was actually a lovely sunny and warm morning – but then around lunch time the temperature dropped from 22 oC to 14 oC in an hour! Fingers crossed the weather gets a little better for when we start traveling!

SAMOA!!

2006-09-20T23:00:00.000+01:00

Well – we actually did something this weekend so I can update! Whilst Rob was under the impression we were heading to Kiakora for the weekend to play with the whales and seals, I had actually arranged for us to go to Samoa for the weekend instead. It was extremely difficult keeping it a secret and I almost slipped up more than once over the six weeks before we went!

So Thursday after work I went home and packed and waited (for waited read paced around the house far too excited!) for Rob to finish work – when he got in I gave him his first present (lonely planet guide to Samoa) and second present (tickets) and told him we were getting picked up in an hour to go to the airport!!

I picked Samoa for no particular reason other than we have tickets to Fiji, Cook Islands and Tahiti so it couldn’t be one of them. Vanuatu was also on the list, as was Tonga – although I’m glad now I didn’t pick Tonga as their King just died and they have three months of mourning. But Samoa worked out best for dates and money so I picked that. So so so glad I did as it’s possibly one of the best ‘holidays’ we’ve ever been on! Highly recommend it if you get anywhere near this area.

Day One…

We arrived in Apia – the capital of Samoa – and had decided that we would actually move straight onto Savaii (the other main island) so we hopped in a taxi and went to the ferry port as the air hostess on the plane had told us that the ferry leaves at 12 which meant that we made it just in time.

After feeling a little queasy from the ferry we took a taxi to the market for some food (great little bananas and a bag of tomatoes) with a view to getting the bus from the market up to the top of island to the village of Manase, where we thought would be a good spot to stay. The local busses were crazy! Packed with people, they don’t go until every space in the bus is taken and people are spilling out the space where the door should be! After the early start, the flight, the ferry, the heat (a lovely 29oC with a healthy amount of humidity – so nice!!), the fact that we were both wearing trousers and wanted to get to the beach – we wimped out of the bus and got a taxi! We both thought that the bus would be a good experience so we vowed to take the bus back down to the ferry port.

I’m not sure that I actually had time to develop what I thought Samoa would be like, I was so pre-occupied with trying to organize it all in secret (along with birthday presents and everything else too), keeping everything secret, organizing time off work for both of us (in secret) and getting money exchanged, no preconceptions were developed. Which can only be a good thing. Samoa is typically South Pacific. Lush green landscapes, thatched huts, white sand beach and, of course, the beautiful turquoise ocean. There were chickens, pigs, dogs running about on the roads and horses tied up outside of the huts. Samoa’s traditionally don’t bury their deceased in a communal grave yard, but at the front of their house/hut complete with gravestones – a good idea really, but not one that I can see catching on in the western world!

It was a long taxi ride (hour?) up the east coast of the island and along the North shore to Manese where we found accommodation at Vacations Beach Fales. A fale (far-lay) is traditional Samoan accommodation which is a hut with a thatched roof and blinds that you can let down in case it rains. It was beautiful, each night we let down the mozzie net and fell asleep to the sound of the waves, then woke up to the sunrise over the beach.

It seriously does not get better than this.

The Ferry...

The sun rise..

The fale and the beach..

The beach...

Day Two…

We decided to go diving seeing as both of us were missing the fish – there’s only one choice of diving operations on Savaii which made it easy to decide who to go with! Two very relaxing dives with Flavia and Fabien (and Siaki) so a big fa'afe tai lava to all of you!

We managed to pass the rest of the day by sleeping and playing on the beach. Ahhh the hardship!

Savaii from the dive boat...

A couple of toby's...

A little crab with pink nippers!

This is some sort of anemone that has an electric blue light pulsating through it - never seen that before and Flavia didn't know what it was - but was very pleased Rob and i saw it as she's pointed it out to people before and they have looked at the rather large banded coral shrimp sitting in front of it! ID anyone?

Day Three…

We were up early again and went along with a few of the medical students we had met the day before at diving/dinner to help out with the local kids who were cleaning a section of land by the dive shop that people had started to use as a dump (which in turn was making the village look a bit messy). There was about 30 local kids, the reverend of the village church and a few other local people, plus Rob and I, four or five of the med students and Flavia & Fabien.

The kids...

The rubbish...

By ten o’clock the area looked so much better and we hit the road to find the famous Timote waterfall (actually called Afu Aau), an ancient mound called Tia Seu (don’t ask) and the Alofaaga blow holes.

Walking to the mound...

Tall trees..

The waterfall. Photos so do not do this justice!

Blowholes.

The gang.

Day Four…

Well we decided today to head back to the main island (Upolu) to stay in Apia for the night to make sure that we didn’t miss the ferry / connection for our flight the next day. We braved the local bus – the first one we got on was packed. Just packed – I have no photos as I could not move! After we’d been on it about 5 minutes we passed another bus (going in the other direction and the driver told us to get off and get on that bus. A little worrying seeing as it was going the wrong direction but we were glad to actually have a seat (and our bag inside the bus rather than bouncing around on the shelf behind the bus!!). I started to get a little worried – if we missed the 10am ferry we would have to wait until 2pm to get the next one which would mean we wouldn’t have time to visit the Palolo Deep Marine Reserve to snorkel for the afternoon! But after we passed the place we were picked up by the first bus, we turned around and headed for the ferry port. The ferry, just like the outbound one, was packed – but cheap ($9 Tala ~ 1.70 pounds) which made upf or the fact we sat on the floor!

Once we got to Upolu we grabbed a taxi to Apia town, found a cheap place to stay for the night (both of us noting how much warmer it was when you weren’t effectively sleeping outside on the beach) and headed off for food before snorkeling. Great snorkeling and a bargain at $2 Tala (40p) to get in!

A fancy building

Some sort of pipehorse

For the evening we had a lovely meal (possibly the best meal we have had since we left mum’s roast dinner back in the UK in Feb) at a restaurant where Robert Lois Stevenson apparently first stayed when he got to Samoa, called Sails. It was so good. Being that we were in Samoa and when in Rome and all that business I actually opted for the Tuna (a traditional chili lime onion concoction) and it was delicious! Rob had Oka for starters (a local dish) which was so good (apart from the raw tuna bits that I didn’t taste) we got the chef to write down the recipe for us!

Day Five…

The weather matched our moods (pissing with rain) as we made our way to the airport and checked in for our flight back to cold NZ.

An awesome trip. For Rob’s first dip into Polynesia and my second (after Hawaii), it has made us both really look forward to the South Pacific bit of our trip coming up in January. We are spending a month in Melanesia, and then some time in Cook Islands and a few (expensive) days in Tahiti. Can’t wait! Before leaving for the weekend we both handed in our notice to our respective works – lasting only three months we’ve decided that NZ isn’t really the place for us right now, though we are going to spend the next 3 months after we leave work traveling around and getting some walking in.

That’s it. Back to reality for a month…

The 9-5 life...

2006-09-07T21:24:00.000+01:00

Well, we haven't really done much over the last couple of weeks, we've moved house (much better than our last place!) and eaten plenty of good food!

Spring has arrived in Christchurch, there are now warm sunny days (a high of 22oC) inbetween the bitterly cold wet windy days!

Last weekend we went with our new flat mate Steve to the driving range and then on Sunday went for a nice walk up the hill behind where i work....

Steve..

Bobs...

Bobs walking up a hill...

View from the top (Christchurch and the ocean).

Little hut thing to show you've got to the top (oh and some historic meaning too).

View on the other side (Lyttleton etc).

Unfortunately Rob has to work this Saturday so any plans to do a 'weekend' trip are cancled and we'll have to find something interesting to do Sunday (probably end up shopping). Next weekend is Rob's big 30! We have a weekend away planned to Kiakora to swim with the animals (dolphins / seals) so i'll be posting photos when we get back from that.

After travelling and living in the Carribean for over two years now, it's strange living a 'normal' life again. We both have 9-5 jobs and weekends off (mostly), we have weekly food shopping to do, weekly washing to do (in a washing machine that washes your clothes rather than wetting them and pulling off buttons / adding rips). Our bags are unpacked and said bags put away. We have house keys and car keys and we know where we are sleeping each night and we haven't had a panic about tickets / passports / visas / wallets / hotel reservations for over two months now. I'm aware of the story line in Home and Away, Shortland Street, House, Boston Legal, Prison Break and a number of other trash shows. Everyone speaks English and it's become a novelty (even if a novelty that envokes some happy memories) to eat Thai food again. Emails are recieved from a friend of mine who has spent the last two years exploring South East Asia and Australaisa and i have to say my feet get itchier every time i get a new one.

Check out Sam & Andy's blog for an interesting read (link on the right) - they are currently in China having a great time.

I miss it, each and every panic, each and every dodgy meal, each and every crap bed, each and every new memory. And the feet get itchier as each day passes.....

Bone Carving...

2006-08-21T06:10:00.000+01:00

So bone carving is a must for everyone in NZ, much better than buying one from a shop! It took about two and a half hours of filing and sanding to get to the finished product - but how good do they look?! Rob and I were both very impressed with ourselves!

First you pick a design and it gets stuck onto a piece of bone. You have to file it flat as close to the edges as you can....

Then make the edges rounded on both sides....

Cut the middle bit out and spend about 30 minutes sanding it smooth...

Get it polished up on the machine by the dude and ta-da! Our very own bone carvings!

TranzAlpine...

2006-08-18T21:25:00.000+01:00

So - in the end last weekend we decided to do the TranzAlpine trip - which is a train that goes from Christchurch over to Greymouth and back. Greymouth is on the West coast and therefore you have to go up/over/through the mountains to get there.

We were super lucky with the weather - it was PERFECT winter conditions, blue sunny skies and lovely white snow on the mountains. When we got to Arthurs Pass it was actually snowing a little bit - but by the time we were back at sea level in Greymouth it was sunny again!

The train left Christchurch and wound it's way through the Canterbury Plains, we saw lots of farms, cows and sheep, it then follows this really cool river (Waimakariri) - lots of gorges and viaducts and tunnels. Then after going through the mountains you pop out on the other side and it's totally different flora and fauna - almost rainforest like in places.

Canterbury Plains with Southern Alps in the background...

A very good day out and i can recommend it to anyone who is in this area - we might do it again in summer to see the difference but everyone has said how it's much better in the winter. Enjoy the photos, it was total torture getting them as you had to go out to the viewing carriage, which had no windows, to get good ones. This of course meant being outside and it was winter and we were going about 60mph at least. Windy, windy, windy - but worth it, and somehow very amusing!

Little bit of the Wairmakariri in the moutains...

Snow at Arthurs Pass...

River again on the way back to CC...

And i know everyone is dying to know what we are up to this weekend... well in about an hour we are off to go bone carving. Yes, bone carving. Sit on the edge of your seats and wait for that one!!

Still in Christchurch...

2006-08-11T22:44:00.000+01:00

Wow - 30th June was the last time i update this. That's pretty bad! Well, in my defense not an awful lot has happened really. Within a month of landing in NZ we both had jobs and somewhere to live, which pretty much took up all of the month to get sorted. But now we have both started the jobs and we live somewhere proper (we even got broadband installed!!) we've been off doing a few things so i have some stuff to say to update!!

Where to start, where to start?! Well one of the first interesting things we did was get tickets for the NZ All Blacks vs. Australia. Very cool game, but not nearly as noisy as you would expect from a big game like that. Compared to the English both side's supporters were fairly quiet! Maybe it had something to do with the fact it was FREEZING COLD!!!!

The next thing we did was explore around Christchurch a bit more, this made much easier by the fact we bought a car (yes another one). So one of the most touristy things you can do in Christchurch after seeing the cathedral is the GONDOLA! Excellent fun. Christchurch is on the Canterbury plains, which generally means you can see all the really cool mountains with snow on them in the background because all around us is flat. Apart from the hills that are by where i work which separate Lyttleton harbor from the rest. You can walk up them or you can go up on the gondola like a pair of lazy tourists.

Christchurch & mountains in the far distance...

Lyttleton Habour..

From here we went back down (in the gondola) and drove through the tunnel under the hill we had just been on to get to Lyttleton and from Lyttleton we went round the hill we had just been on and through, to get to Sumner. Sumner is lovely; we even got a bit of beach time. In our coats and stuff. No, I’m lying a bit, Rob took his coat of and our friend Shiv actually had shorts on. Though he is a bit silly. No photos of that, i wouldn't want to frighten anyone. Haha.

Sumner Beach...

Last weekend we went to Hanmer Springs to visit the hot pools and see the lovely alpine village. Visit the hot springs we did and lovely the alpine village was! The drive there was also very cool as we actually go into some of the mountains that we had seen. We of course clocked more sheep than we could count and i saw a deer and a donkey (not doing anything dodgy, i saw them separately), there's all sorts of wildlife in New Zealand!

This weekend we aren’t up to much. We were going to go to Akaroa which is near here and really nice but the weather is super super cold and the people at work said we might get stuck there if it snows, so we've scrapped that. We might go to the mountains or we might go up the coast and see some seals or something. Roll on the summer. :)

New Zealand....

2006-07-01T00:08:00.000+01:00

We are in Christchurch! (thanks Rod!)

So - it's actually not as cold as i was expecting. After the weather reports we saw in Sydney of the snow everywhere and people losing power etc i was expecting snow on the ground! But - thankfully - there isn't. I think it snowed on the second day we were here, but apart from that the weather has been really nice. Very English, but more english spring than english winter, plenty of blue skies and dry cold days.

What have we done? Not an awful lot really. We are both in the process of obtaining jobs, Rob actually starts on Tuesday and mine is going a little slower but should be all sorted by the end of next week at the latest.

On the first night at Base Backpackers we headed to the bar to celebrate our arrival. Several beers later we both competed in a Rock-Paper-Scissors World cup, which wound up with me winning! Bonus. It was a bus ticket around the South Island with one of the tour companies, being a bit drunk and thinking it was worth about $200 (70 quid) we weren't that excited and left the bar (drunkenly) for a curry next door (excellent from what i vaguely remember!). But the next day i went in and got the ticket and it's actually worth $755 (250 quid), i NEVER win things, certainly not things actually worth something! A good start! Plus this gives us an excuse to go and get drunk every Tuesday night until we win Rob one! No luck this tuesday, we both made it to the quarter finals and then got knocked out. That was after i was part of a very strange juggling entertainer man's finale which involved the words "hold this mans legs and When i count to three, jump up - then wrap your legs backwards around my waist" - thankfully we didn't take the camera out with us. :)

Since Base we've moved to a smaller backpackers and have been here just over a week doing boring things like eating, sleeping, applying for work, drinking coffee and trying to stay warm. We walked up the cathedral tower (a large amount of small steps) and got a nice view of the city a few days ago - but some bastard stole my memory card and reader. On the card are the photos of that, plus some really nice photos of the sharks in Sydney Aquarium and the snowy mountains as we flew in (bastard, bastard - i'm not quite over this yet). Luckily there wasn't really anything on there that we won't be doing again so it could be worst. Grrrr.

Anyway - today we went for a walk about, ended up in the botanical gardens after walking along the river for a while. If any of you out there have been traveling for a while and miss England, you should definitely come here! It's England but a few years ago! See for yourselves....

River Avon

Look! Spring is on it's way! We found a few confused daffs flowering.

Haha. Rob and i are totally going to 'punt' the river. We are waiting until we purchase a gingham hamper basket to put the food in.

Reason it's called Cathedral Square

Over the next few days we are going to be apartment hunting. And researching all the cool stuff we are going to be doing once we've finished working! Hopefully I'll have some photos up of our new place soon!

Lennox to Coffs Harbour to Nambucca Heads to Port Macquarie to Newcastle to Sydney to Bris-Vagas

2006-06-17T01:21:00.000+01:00

So we left Lennox and nipped up the coast to Queensland to get the car safety-ed, then drove down the coast to Coffs Harbour. Nice little coastal town with a brand new YHA that we stayed at, a good find so we treated ourselves to an Indian for dinner! In the morning we explored a bit and took some photos of the area and then headed off in search of Nambucca Heads.

Another cute little coastal town, though we were starting to notice the cold by this point, we walked up and down and around and then got back in the car and headed to Port Macquarie for the night. We ended up staying in a cabin in a caravan park rather than a hostel as they are roughly the same price and you get a kitchen in your cabin and - more importantly - you get a bathroom. I think this is the first time in almost four months I haven't had to put all my clothes on in the middle of the night to go to the toilet. A luxury indeed!

Up the next morning and we explored some of the beaches (Port has LOADS!) and then walked up through the bushes to a hill thing / lookout. After some photos and a walk further around the headland I spotted something vaguely familiar out to sea. I called Rob over, and we stood watching the sea for a good five minutes before they came up again but we got to see some of the early season whales. They put on a little show, showing their flutes and blowing water etc. No photos as they were quite far away unfortunately. After this we continued down the coast, taking the odd tourist drive - one really good one being around the great lakes - until we got to Newcastle.

In Newcastle it was officially freezing. The coldest we have been since Japan! It was actually only about 12oC but still. Anyway, the hostel was doing a free BBQ at a local bar so we went down to that and drank too much. Of course! The next day we hung out there sorting emails and hiding from the weather, and then Saturday we made the trip down to Sydney.

We actually need to get to Coogee/Bondi so we ended up driving right through the city which was pretty cool. Rob's friend Ross was very kind to let us stay at his, and the first night we go there we headed down to Darling Harbour / Kings Street Warf where Ross runs a Latin American bar restaurant. We had a lovely meal and some drinks, and then some more drinks, and danced a bit and then had some drinks. Great night, and getting in after 3am makes it easy to lie in the next day! We also took the ferry over to Manly, only just missing the wine festival, but having a nice meal with everyone at an African restaurant and some drinks too. Enough drinks to miss the last ferry home (definitely the boys fault!).

(sorry about the lack of photos, i've been to Sydney before and have a load, so i kind of forgot to take some!)

We also made an effort to sell the car - which culminated in offering it to people for free and still not being able to get rid of it. It's total low season in Sydney and I think anyone who is there braving the weather is there to work, rather than to buy cars. We went to the car market in Kings Cross (for market, read dark car park), where they had a car that was considerable newer than ours, considerable more expensive than ours, and an estate, and they were practically giving it away because they were leaving the next day. This is what we had feared when purchasing a car and thought we had a back-up plan all sealed up. That fell through (never trust an aussie) which left us in a panic as what to do.

And here we are in Brisbane. Whoever says you can't drive from Sydney to Brisbane in one day is lying. You can totally do it and be here around 5pm in time to do some shopping and drink some well deserved beers! Daniel is very kindly taking control of big blue to try and flog it, and we are doing a relocation in a rental car back to Sydney (cheaper than flying). So it's Saturday, we leave tomorrow, hopefully get to Sydney Monday earlyish and get time to see the aquarium and the other stuff we missed when we were there last.

So that's it for Australia for now. Three months on the East Coast, so that means when we come back, it's three months on the west coast. We are hopefully going to time it so we can snorkel with the whale sharks and all that nonsense.

We fly out Tuesday to New Zealand.

To the snow.

SNOW!

Yes, I’ve bought a coat, my first in two and half years.

Tully to Innisfail to Mount Garnet to Townsville to Ayr to Capricorn Caves to Marybourgh to Lennox Head...

2006-06-02T09:54:00.000+01:00

Well, a couple of weeks since I last did an update - we haven't been up to too much though...
Some pictures are definitely worth 1000 words. This is white water rafting on the Tully River.. Surely enough said?!?

So, we went from Tully further up North, but quickly decided once we got to Innisfail that we've been up far enough and time to go inland for a bit to see some mountains and waterfalls and stuff like that.

One of the first things we saw when we went inland was a cassowary!! Quite a rare sight, no good photos unfortunately because the car scared it and we were scared of it being close to the car and us.

Speeding cassowary!

The waterfall circuit was really good, about 6 in a day! Most of the walking tracks down to the lookouts were roped off because of damage from the recent cyclone. We went down them anyway, plenty of mud and fallen trees, and the constant rain throughout the day made it all the more interesting!

Ellinjaa Falls

Zillie Falls

Millaa Millaa Falls

We stayed a very cold night on Mount Garnet (inland and high up, brrr) and then drove down some of the 'Great Inland Way' back to Townsville. Now, you'd think that because this was pretty much the only road to get from inland to Townsville from the area it would be an ok road. Not true. Half of each lane was paved and then there was mud either side if you came across anyone else. The only problem was the people you came across were generally driving 50m long 'road-trains'. At 100kmp/h! Very scary, especially because our car isn't 4wd so coming off paved road to dirt at 100kmp/h isn't highly recommended! Anyway - this quickly got boring and 350km later we hit Townsville!

In Townsville we reunited with the girls from the Whitsundays trip (hi girls!) as Ali had taken the plunge and decided to return to England where M&M taste proper and you can buy monster munch in the corner shop. :) We had hoped for a boozy night out to celebrate her imminent departure, but we should have picked somewhere less... less.. Townsville. What we got was a great Thai meal and a few drinks in a few dodgy bars filled with dodgier people!
We were joined at the camp by a very brave rainbow lorikeet...

From Townsville we headed south to Ayr to do our last big 'thing', which was a trip to the Yongala wreck for a dive about. We got to Ayr and from there found Alva Beach and a great campsite and about 25 knots of wind. Far too windy to head out to sea on a little boat to jump into the sea. The forecast was for the wind to stay so we decided to stay too and took advantage of the weekly rate at the nice campsite.

And here's another photo that doesn't need too much explaining...

"Reason number one not to park your car under a coconut tree."

Anyway - we got there Thursday and the wind stayed about until Tuesday morning. With the wind came the kite boarders and two very nice English lads that helped us drink some wine, beer, Bundy and play some cards. They were also really kind and let us play with the kites they weren't using, lots of fun being pulled along the beach by big kites!

So we got out Wednesday diving. It was a nice dive but I think the whole thing had been hyped up a bit so it was a bit disappointing. And it was expensive. But, a nice dive all the same and probably the last time in the water for a while now.

Lots of fish and LOTS of sea snakes. The wreck has been down there for a long time and has bits of people inside apparently. Well bones really. I actually find it a little creepy diving on what is effectively a gravesite.

From Ayr we headed to Mackay to fix the coconut problem and then almost got to Rockhampton but it was dark and we were running out of petrol so we ended up heading to the Capricorn Caves as they had a camping site.

The next day we enquired about tours around the caves and found that there was a 'caving adventure' tour that was leaving in about 40 minutes, so we figured - why not, a little caving adventure sounded pretty cool.

This is probably one of the best things that we have done here so far! There was another couple that signed up too and we decided that instead of starting off easy we would jump right in and then "ramp it up" (in Barry’s words).

I was totally thinking that this would be some easy walk about in the caves with the occasional crawl on hands and knees and stuff. Totally, totally wrong. He takes us in this cave and then is like "ok, so to get through this you'll have to commando crawl all the way through, use your feet to move yourself forward". Never in my life would I have thought that it was possible to squeeze through the tiny holes we did. But as you can see from the photos there are big smiles so it was fun and scary, a great combination!

This is rob coming out of the "birthing canal", this one was totally determined by the size of your shoulders, you had to go hands first, and basically wiggle your way through. Pretty scary. Rob and I got through as did Ann of the other couple, but Raff and Barry the guide couldn't get through and had to go a different way.
Crazy fun.

From here we managed to get down as far as Maryborough and ended up going to the cinema to watch X-men 3 (very entertaining) and then down to Brisbane to quickly call in and say hi to Kelly and Mal (and Aaron) and then onto Lennox where we are now.

The car has been cleaned, polished and is ready for selling. Fingers crossed everyone, hopefully she will sell on our way down to Sydney or very quickly once we are there.

Town of 1770 to Yeppoon to Great Kepple to Rockhampton to Airlie Beach to Whitsundays to Townsville to Tully...

2006-05-15T02:27:00.000+01:00

After leaving Bagara we headed up the coast a bit to Town of 1770. Very cute little place which is basically the start of the places that do trips out to the Great Barrier Reef. They do a trip to Lady Musgrave Island, which we had been warned off due to the fact that so many people have been there and have dived there, it's a bit shit. We really wanted to go to Fitzroy Reef. Only one company goes out there, three times a week - they are the only company allowed out there (at the moment!) and they only take about 10 divers each time. So it has a reputation of being one of the better places to dive on the reef. Unfortunately you have to pay a bit to get out there and prior to getting to 1770 we had already ruled out the option of diving there, due to the fact it's $135 to get there and then $60 for two dives on top of that. But with nothing else to do once we got there we checked it out anyway and found out that if you are a backpacker and have one of the three cards (VIP, Nomads, YHA) you get the boat trip for $80! Bonus, so we booked for the next day and had some fish and chips to celebrate!!

Up early the next day and off to the reef - we were lucky enough to happen on some dolphins just as we got to the reef, I even got a couple of photos which makes a change! The first dive was better than the second (first dive was outside the reef, second was inside the reef) but both were definitely worth doing. We saw a crazy amount of different things on the first dive; Lionfish to nudibranchs to massive bull rays about 3m nose to tail. The second dive was good for the nudibranchs and fish life - and it's so refreshing to see so much healthy coral, so much coral in general really.

Rod (or anyone) - any ideas what this is? About 3 inches long and very, very quick - hence the bad focusing!! Can't find a decent fish ID book out here. Juvenile Barramundi maybe??

After 1770 we skipped through Rockhampton to Yeppoon (gateway to Great Kepple Island). This campsite was so nice we decided to stay a couple of days and take the opportunity to sort through (i.e. throw out) some of the crap we have accumulated in the car, which as each day passes it gets closer to resembling an old blue skip. We set the tent up so that we could have the door at the back open, which gave us a cool view of the beach and the Islands just off shore.
Both mornings we were there, the noisy cars from the road did us a favour and woke us up in time to see the beautiful sunrise.

We dumped the car and got the ferry over to Great Kepple Island, a very nice place to do a bit of exploring, sunbathing and snorkeling for a couple of days. It was very quite, but nice. The snorkeling was awesome once you got over the shock of the cold water! I saw a little shark - I found the name of it at some point but didn't write it down so it's lost until I get my hands on a fish book again. The last morning we were there we went to the closest snorkeling point (shelving beach) so we'd be back in time for the ferry and we were lucky enough to see a turtle! Following the rules and not chasing it, it soon got too curious and came and checked us out getting some air at the same time. Very nice way to end our stay on GKI. If you can - go there.

From the ferry port we picked up the car and headed into Rockhampton for the night to have a steak in the 'Beef capital of Australia'. Very nice steak, though there was an obscene amount of it! It was also 'Beef week 2006' so there were plenty of bulls, cows, horses and cowboys/girls around. Always good for a giggle!

From here we headed up to Airlie Beach to see what sailing trips were on stand-by for the next few days. We had our eye on a maxi-yacht that did diving as well as a trip to the outer reef. Unfortunately it came with the name "Spank me". But you can't have everything! Lucky for us - it was on stand-by so we got a nice $150 off advertised price and jumped on the boat the next day!

This is my second Whitsunday trip and I have to admit I enjoyed the first one better. When I was here last Prosail were the big company to go with, but now they appear to have been bought out by a company called Oz Sailing Adventures, which is who we went with. Prosail do apparently still operate as a separate company so I’m not sure if they are as good as they were. Having said that it was an awesome trip, and so great to see that even though so many things have changed in Australia, the Whitsundays have not.

The Bad Points: If you've done a lot of sailing, you may well be disappointed with the boat and the amount of sailing you do, though I guess safety regulations have been tightened and things like that so I suppose they did what they could. Unfortunately we didn't put in one tack or jibe in the three days... Sleeping was a very warm experience, though I think you fair better if you are in a single bunk rather than a double. The diving operation wasn't very well organised, and although I appreciate how difficult it must be on a boat that is in no way set up to accommodate divers, there was definitely room for improvement. Though the dive instructor did get praised for being good with intro divers, I wasn't too impressed with the way he handled the certified ones.

The Good Points: The big sail we did was on a reach back from the outer reef, and even with our baggy baton-less mainsail and ripped jenny the power of the boat was amazing! This is the fastest I’ve been (and possibly ever will go) on a monohull. The group of people we had were really fun and everyone got on with one another - surprisingly the majority of the group was British, with Americans coming in a close second. We were fed enough that Rob only said "I’m hungry" 3 times in the whole 3 days which I think is a record in our entire relationship. :) Whilst I was catching up on my sleep Rob was prancing around on the bow (as he often does on yachts) and a dolphin came right up and played in the bow wave about 2 foot below him for a good few minutes. Unfortunately my camera was asleep with me. We also got to see dolphins a few other times, though more a few fins in the distance than a close-up flipper experience. I counted about 7 turtles (though it could well have been just two coming up again and again) coming up to the surface for a breath and a look about. The diving was great, a nice shallow, long dive, with plenty to see. Some great nudibranchs and fish - we found a fish I’ve yet to get a good photo of because it's super shy and tends to put tail first to the lens which is weird as most shy fish head to a hole and then stare at the camera! But I did get a video of it, so hopefully get an ID on it sometime soon. You got the chance to dive on the outer reef too - Rob and I didn't, because it was a choppy surface and an hour past high tide and I’m too much of a lazy diver to deal with current and all that and the faff of getting kitted up on that boat! Also I don't think you saw much more diving out there than we did snorkeling.

The Photos:

The famous Hill Inlet.

Rod - again any idea what this is? i have a video of it if that will make it easier!

Back on land we all met up at Beaches for a few drinks in Airlie - Sara took most of the photos there with her camera so I’m waiting to steal hers... And here she is!

Our plan was to get up early and do the big drive (6 hours?) to Mission Beach, our next stop to go white water rafting, but after some much needed shopping for some much need items (mainly a hammer, yes we have been camping for 2 months without one!), and finally finding somewhere that would change the oil on the car it was dark by the time we got half way (Townsville) so we stopped there for the night before a bit more shopping (and some car pampering, runs much better with new sparks and HT leads!) and the rest of the drive. Because we had a bit more time we stopped off at one of the waterfalls marked - Jourama Falls, just south of Innisfail. It was just a short 1.2km walk to the lookout point so neither of us took our swimmers as it was very buggy and not that hot. By the time we actually got up to the lookout and had seen the water (lovely fresh waterfally water) we backtracked to the rock pools and went in in our underwear for an invigorating (for invigorating read f-ing cold) and refreshing swim! It was worth buying the car just to be able to do this!!

Next stop - WHITE WATER RAFTING - yeah! :)

Brisbane to the Coral Coast...

2006-04-28T03:04:00.000+01:00

Brisbane to Deception Bay to Maroochydoor & Australia zoo to Noosa to Hervey Bay to Fraser Island to the Coral Coast…

Right – so after spending some time on the Gold Coast we headed back up to Brisbane for the night with everything getting super busy for Easter weekend. After finding that it’s all pretty much booked up there, and most other places – we went to visit Kelly, Malcolm and baby Aaron in Deception Bay where we were treated to real food, a visit to Eumundi Saturday markets and a fabulous home cooked proper English roast for Easter Sunday. Awesome!

Fingal Beach

Kirra Beach

Lorrakeets (sp?) @ Maroochydoor

From here we left (reluctantly!!) and headed north to Maroochydoor for a couple of nights to take Rob to Australia Zoo to see Steve and his crocs. Great little campsite right by the beach and the day at the zoo was really cool. Steve wasn’t there but we did get to see a very nice bird, snake, and then croc show in the ‘crocoseum’. Well worth a day of your time if you are near the place.

After Maroochy we went to Noosa and camped there for a few days – generally relaxing and playing in the surf and sunbathing. Good times.

From Noosa we drove up to Hervey Bay to book ourselves onto a tour for Fraser Island for a few days. We were lucky enough when we got there that the tour we wanted was leaving the next day – so we paid up and then got a room in the backpackers who said we could park our car in their car park for the days we were away. Hostel was the first one we have stayed at since we got to Oz. Very “I’m 19 and going to get wasted every night”. :). But a reasonable nights sleep before an early start and onto the ferry for the Fraser Tour.

Fraser was really cool, we had a great group that wasn’t too big but big enough that was enough people for everyone to get on (Hi people from group!). We did the usual on the first day… Lake Birabeen, Pile Valley, Lake McKenzie (lots of Frisbee and water playing!). In the evening Rob and I made the silly mistake of thinking we were 19 and got wasted on a couple of liters of wine and then $8 jugs of cheap beer. Good night, but the hangovers are by far outweighing the good times. We must be getting old! ;)

Second day was hangover day – luckily I sat up front for the first drive (about an hour and 20 minutes) if I’d sat in the back I would have thrown up for sure!! We saw some bats in the colony on the way over to 75mile beach – crazy bats everywhere. We stopped at India Head, then the Champagne Pools, and then Eli Creek for the rest of the afternoon. We even had a dip in the resorts hot tub on the way back before dinner. This evening’s entertainment consisted of very few drinks and a fairly early night… We know our limits!!

View from India Head

View back down 75-Mile beach

Third day was the best day – the sun stayed out for most of it and we got a very very cool walk over the dunes from Lake Wabby to the beach where our driver Mitch (surely one of the highlights of the trip?!?) picked us up. At Lake Wabby we found some Aussie’s that came equipped with a boogie board and they were nice enough to let us use it. Boys will be boys and they built a ramp at the end of the track which proceeded to make everyone do funny things like stop dead and come off boogie board to land their on head near water. Mainly the girls actually! I didn’t have a go, too chicken and when in Australia I always think back to last time I was here and all the silly things I did and injuries I acquired. Rob was easily persuaded though!

Lake Wabby

So we decided as we were all staying in Hervey Bay that night that we would go out and eat together – forgetting of course that it was Anzac Day so pretty much everything was shut – and the places that were open really didn’t want to be! So we had a Sub-way – which is always good! We then found a crappy noisy bar (at the hostel we were staying at!) that was open till 11, but even better was the bar next door that was open till 12. After that bar chucked us out we hit the beach for a bit of a stand about and chat and then parted ways and had another reasonable nights sleep before heading off early up the coast to here… which is Bagara Beach just on the coast from Bundaberg, otherwise known as the Coral Coast so we are getting some diving in while we can. Campsite is lovely – can highly recommend this one – a beaut.

We went out diving yesterday from the shore and also this morning on the artificial reef that consisted of planes, bits of planes, barges and boats that have been sunk over the last few years.. Photos below.. Feels strange to be putting fish photos back up on this blog again. Seems like ages ago when that was all I did! :) The visabilty is no little Cayman, but was good enough to see 3 massive turtles, a very nice ray that looked very similar to an eagle, a fair few nudibanchs, box fish, bat fish - basically a shit load of fish & animals everywhere!

Flat head fishy.

Big eagle type ray swimming for me!

Big eagle-type ray

Nudi

Nudi

Big turtle, about 2m from tip of head to tip of tail.

We are staying here for a bit and then heading up just a bit further to Agnes Waters/Town of 1770. Next major stop is Great Kepple Island, next major tour is sailing the Whitsundays.

Cannot WAIT!

Chrissie out.

Australia continued....

2006-04-15T05:53:00.000+01:00

So we've been camping now for over two weeks. It's so cool! I love camping. Of course it's much easier the way we are doing it, but still it's really cool.

Anyway - we had some nice storms in Lennox Head and we learnt that our tent doesn't leak or fall down (bonus as next door's did a bit!). For the overcast days we spent our time shopping and more shopping, though we didn't actually buy anything apart from loads of food and a pair of fins each. It's suprising how many meals you can cook in just one pan, even in the rain! - thanks for the rain jackets mum and dad! Anyway- the stormy weather brought two very good things... one the surf calmed down and cleaned up and was then PERFECT for body surfing with our new fins. I didn't get any photos as i was having too much fun and didn't want to go back to camp to get the camera, but it was wicked! Perfect waves! And then - the second thing was the sky as we walked back to the campsite. See photos.

After leaving Lennox our original plan was to go and stay in Byron for a few nights, but after getting there and finding out how much they put up the prices for Easter, and the fact that the weather was overcast still, we decided to head inland to Mount Warning National Park and camp there for the night. The idea is to get up at stupid o'clock an climb the mountain in the dark, which then gives you a great view of the sun rising. There wasn't all that much to do there apart from this, so after cooking up the remaining spag bol and scoffing that we went to bed. At 6.40pm (people from LC, i never thought i'd find a place where you went to bed earlier than in LC!!). Suprisingly we were both asleep by probably 7 at the latest! Just enough sleep to get up at 3am, cook some beans and make some coffee then head up to the car park to start the walk. Very cool walk - we started around 3.40am and go to the top (via a not too bad walk of 4.3km then a 300m climb with chain to pull yourself up with. Basically straight up and very scary!) at about 5.10am. Just in time to see the sun rise. Well worth it. If you are on the east coast of Oz or heading here - this is a MUST DO. If you were here and you didn't do it, well, shame on you! :) Though i must add that if you do do it, and you camp at the Mount Warning National Park, make sure you wear shoes. Proper feet covering shoes. I got bitten by a MASSIVE ant (about 20mm long, you could see the horrible pincer things he spiked me with), which hurt. A lot.

(that pointy bit in the middle is Mount Warning)

From there (after we had climbed down in the daylight and actually seen what we climbing through and on before, equally as scary), we headed back to the camp site and packed up our tent and headed for the coast again. To Fingal Beach, a spit of land that comes out between the Tweed River and the sea, just north of Kingscliff and south of Tweed Heads. Very nice it is too. The plan is to head north still. Play in the waves, eat well and drink lots. Not doing much else really! :)

I actually wrote this a few days ago, from Fingal Beach we went north to Kirra beach for the noisiest stay in a campsite so far - next to the highway! And then on up to Main Beach in Surfers for a night out there. AND THEN, back to brissie to stay on the boat for a night before arriving yesterday in Deception Bay to visit Kelly & Mal & baby Aaron before the big trip up north starts.... Photos and updates to follow.

Although i have missed out our first (and lets hope last for a while) hic-cup with the car. Whilst sat at some of the traditional Aussie traffic lights (i.e. for about 5 minutes) Rob beady-eyed the temperature of the engine slowly but steadily climbing higher and higher. Luckily the lights evenually changed and we manged to pull over before we blew anything up - and it was a simple radiator hose that had split. After a push down a hill from some helpfull aussie blokes, and some magic worked by Rob and his multi-tool the offending hose was off and how fortunate was it that we broke down about a minutes walk form supercheap auto that actually had the hose we needed for our 16year old car. $13, one screwdriver and 25 minutes later we were on our way. A lucky escape? I think so! I'm off to buy a mobile phone and a subscription to RACQ cover when shops open Tuesday. :)

AUSTRALIA!!

2006-04-04T08:15:00.000+01:00

Well, we've been here almost two weeks now, and even by our lazy standards we've achieved alot! See below for our best purchase so far... what a beaut!

So we flew into Melbourne, but because of the Commonwealth games we couldn't find anywhere to stay so instead of getting into that whole searching for accommodation when there isn't any, we hit the internet for flights and flew straight over to Brissie to see Dan and Kim (Hi Dan and Kim!). After dropping our bags we pretty much did absolutely nothing for a good few days. Recovering from being on the go for a while i guess.

After seeing a few sights of Brissie, relaxing and repacking we headed up the Sunshine coast to see fellow LC escapee's Ralph and Gail (Hi Ralph and Gail!). Rob finally got to see 'real' Australia! The stretched out beaches with almost nobody on them, nice waves to play in. Lovely. A great relaxing week with walks along the beach with their crazy-lovely dog and plenty of red wine and beer!

Anyway - R & G started to quiz us on our plans and we quickly realised that with ralph's expertise we could purchase a car! So we hunted around for about an hour, found one we liked, had dinner while we waited for a return call, then bingo! Now, anyone who's been to Oz knows they have this big thing over Ford's and Holdens (Holdens are Vaxhalls for those in the UK), you sort of have to be on one side or the other. Now, anyone who knows me from the UK will know i'm firmly stuck in the Ford camp, especially after the XR2 first car. But, Ralphie's a Holden boy, and, well, as in Rome i suppose... So we now have a blue Holden Commodore! We've taken it for some test drives... Sunshine Coast to Brissie, Brissie to Lennox Head. And - fingers crossed it continues to behave in the same way it has for those journeys!

In Brissie we spent the day out sailing with Dan and Kim, lovely little sail around Morton bay! Hopefully there will be a few more weekends like that!

We've changed our minds about 9 million times as to where in australia we are actually going, and after extensive planning for heading up north, we left and came down south to Lennox Head, a favourite haunt of mine from my last expedition to Australia!

After leaving Dan's and visiting three or four shops we had bought all the camping gear you'd ever want. It's actually quite embarresssing really, considering we are backpackers, as we have a really nice camping set-up. But the stuff here is so cheap compared to back home, and if you are going to camp - you should do it in style?!!

At the moment we are right down at the lake and about 2 minutes walk from the beach but i think we might relocate up the hill a bit, our patch only has shade in the morning and it's getting near easter and the park seems pretty booked up. Plus i think rob needs more pratice putting up the tent! Not sure how long we are staying - beauty of camping and having your house in the car i suppose! We will move up the coast back to Brisbane over the next few weeks and then see how it goes.

Enjoy the photos!

(thanks Kim for this photo!)

Bangkok to Singapore

2006-03-19T03:56:00.000Z

Well, Bangkok was Bangkok - if you've ever been there you will know how you are usually slightly surprised at how it isn't as bad as everyone makes out. It's just another city really. We did the tourist things, hung out on Khoa San Road, went to the Grand Palace and went to see Wat Po with the big gold lying down budda.

So far we have stayed in ok places, and whilst i am happy to recommend a place to anyone who is interested i won't usually promote places on here. But, having said that the place we stayed at in Bangkok was really really nice. It's a boutique hostel with about nine rooms, most of which have air con and a window (rare for Khoa San Road) and the rooms are only about 4 GBP a night (http://www.shambarabangkok.com/). Bargain. Their restaurant which is ground level (rooms are upstairs) is superb and we even took some receipes with us. Boutique hostel sums it up really, it's like a hostel but not really, the furniture is nice, the bathrooms are clean and your free toast gets brought out to you to eat on the decking in the pretty little courtyard, which makes a nice change from having to do it yourself!

And an uneventful flight later....

....we found ourselves back in Singapore. After setttling in to our horrible, just horrible hostel (mentioning no names, COZY CORNER BACKPACKERS) and a sleep we decided it was high time we finished off the toursity things in Singapore once and for all. So we set off early the next day to get in some much needed shopping (fruitless) and then hopped the MRT and taxi to MacRichie park to walk the 5km to the HSBC Tree Top Walk. The park is an untouched part of Singapore and as with any walk in the woods, you realise that it must have all looked like this in the beginning. What is nice is that the trees are so big and thick that you can't hear the cars, so it's just you, the insects, the funny pointy nose squirrel rat things, funny half lizard half snake things and, of course, the monkeys. Now this was our second visit to the park and i was hoping that we would see monkeys as easily as we did last time, but 4km into the walk, no monkeys. How dissapointing! And then, out of no-where a monkey appears! Well, appears and continues to appear right towards Rob who is innocently (and quite rightly!) carrying the water in a plastic bag that we bought on the way (the water, not the bag). And still he continues, making not a sound. As soon as he got within reaching distance of the bag i think rob and i both realised that he wasn't after us, just the bag that could have potentially had food in it. I'm sure it's one of those things where if we were in a petting zoo the animal keepers would say "now, if any of the animals grab for something, let them have it, don't get into a snatching match with a small monkey". But we weren't so rob had a snatching match with a small monkey and strangely, dispite rob being over 6' and the monkey measuring in at about 1.5' the monkey won. Broken handle and all. :) I think he quickly realised his mistake when all he could smell was water bottle and MY camera bag. But still he sat there cutching it like a small child would a new toy. But after threatening him with the empty water bottle we still had, we retrieved the half full water bottle, my camera bag and the broken handled plastic bag and we also got a show of monkey teeth (fangs, rob wants to write fangs), which, incidentally, are not in proportion with their bodies. Monkeys aren't that fun anymore.

(mum - new trousers!)

The Tree Top Walk was fun. Hot and a little disappointing after we'd both been riled up by a pack of monkeys (yes, it's a pack now). But we did it. And a long, hot walk home later we appreciated that we had a place to stay and shower, even if it was shabby and we had to wear our flipflops at all times (including the shower).

After more food (are those people who lose weight travelling just the ones who get diseases?) and a sleep we took ourselves down to the Marina to get over to Sentosa Island. Finally, FINALLY i got to go on a cable car!! And it was excellent! Nice view of everything because it's so nice and sunny here. Now as most poeple know, cable cars usually go from low point to high point, or high point to high point (or back again) so when we got to the island we were actually at the high point of the island. As is usually the case in Singapore we then had 5 choices to get down to beach level. Stairs, escalator, chair lift, bus, or - mine and rob's particular favourite - a small tray with wheels and a brake so you can free wheel your way down what they call the "luge". If every hill had one of these to get down more people would walk up hills.

We then spilt up for a while to worship our different religions. Mine being sun, sand and sea, so i parked myself on the beach. And rob's being a thirst for knowledge of stuff that happened ages ago, so he went to the museum. After reuniting and checking out the merlion together we got back in the cable car and back to the main tower and then onto Mount Faber.

Sentosa is really nice. It very very touristy, but so obviously so you don't mind. You banish thoughts of "where has this sand come from?" as it wriggles its way through your toes and you turn a blind eye to the 'rocks' with holes in, clearly reveiling to the world that they are in fact fibreglass rocks, and as far from real as you can get. It's peaceful even though we went on a saturday and it was packed. It's created solely for the tourists and the people who live here in Singapore to escape. You don't mind paying over the odds for food because of all these reasons. Somebody is making a big effort to make this a nice place, and it's worked.

After returning to scabby resting place for a rest, we donned our least 'dirty-traveller' clothes, perfumed up and hit the Long Bar at Raffles hotel, for - of course - the famous Singapore Sling. Very nice drink, but the taste is ever so slightly tainted by the fact that you've paid so much for it. :)

And now we are all checked out, ready to lounge around Starbucks, drinking coffee and watching the world that is Singapore happen before us for the rest of the day. Tonight we collect out bags and head to the airport to board our flight to Australia. Plans have changed somewhat due to scheduling (not my fault, the commonwealth games' fault) and we will be hopping around Aus when we get there to land sometime in the afternoon in Brissie.

Bring on the Toohey's and XXXX beer. Mate.

Chrissie Out.

Similans to Phuket to Phi Phi to Krabi to Phi Phi to Phuket...

2006-03-13T03:11:00.000Z

OK, internet is everywhere in Thailand but it's not always cheap and it's almost always slow, which makes it a nightmare when i am putting photo's up aswell. That's my excuse anyway!

Anyway - we left Singapore no problems and got to Phuket ok - nice quick cheap flight, i can recommend Tiger Airways (cheap airline in singapore, http://www.tigerairways.com/) but be careful of the baggage allowance, it's a crappy 15kg so both Rob and i had to pay excess. If you book the flights enough in advance (like we did) it's still the cheapest way by far to get to Thialand flying. Albeit at stupid-o'clock in the morning.

So, Thailand. I was a little apprehensive returning to Thailand, mainly becuase i had the crappest time here before. But, i'm all for giving things a second chance and, after being here for a bit i would urge anyone who's been to a place and hated it to go back, at least once. Maybe at a different time of year or with someone else. Thailand this time around is very cool. Of course that may have something to do with the fact that a) it's gloriously hot here, b) we went on an awsome 4 day liveaboard to the similan/surin national park and saw some really excellent stuff, c) we're not exactly slumming it and d) having someone here with me this time makes everything that much easier.

Enough waffle - here's what we have been up to the last several days....

Off the plane into Phuket and we met a couple in the airport (hi Ryan and Annie!) who were also heading to Phuket solely to get on a liveaboard to the Similan Islands (sensible). One shared taxi ride later we parted ways and Rob and I dumped our belongings in the ScubaCat bar and headed for breakfast (Sub-Way and a fruit smoothie).

After wasting the day emailing and sorting out ferries and accommodation to Phi Phi & Krabi, we got on the boat around 7pm for a long trip through the night to the Similans. Our cabin was awsome! Very comfortable and air conditioned too. We pretty much slept all night and when we woke up it was to the crazy boulders on the islands around us.

We were up every day in time to see sunrise, and doing four one hour plus dives a day we made it every sunset, but probably only just! After being such a lazy diver in the Caribbean i had forgotten all about things like visability under 30m, and currents. :) Rob did very well seeing as all his diving has been in LC and coming from 25/30 minute dives with 30m plus vis and no current to Thailand with 55/65 minute dives, lower visabilty and strong currents! But - you can't beat the diving here for the diversity in the water. Big stuff, little stuff, medium stuff. Then there's the volume. Stuff everywhere. We were lucky enough to see a Manta, but no whale sharks. We might have to head to the west coast of Aus for them. The manta was quite far away but huge and it did a very impressive loop thing before heading off into the blue. The weather for the four days was really good- sunny sunny all the time, and only on the last night did we have a huge storm and lots of rain, but by morning it had cleared up and some people even slept through it. Some people were woken up by other people who can't sleep through storms and because they are awake they think their girlfriends shoud be. All in all a great trip - recommended for anyone who is coming near this area - even if you have to get separate flights like we did - it's totally worth it. Here are a few photos below of stuff we saw.. one of the good things we saw was this nudi that we saw, apparently you only get them in the maldives. Not any more i guess!

So after the live aboard we stayed one night in phuket to get our stuff sorted and then it was onto the ferry to Phi Phi. I've been to Phi Phi before - but that was pre tsunami. In phuket you would never know anything had happened, in Phi Phi, if you've been before - it's a totally different place and clearly something has happened there. When i went there last you couldn't see from one side of the island and there were shops everywhere and people everywhere and it was packed. Now you can see from one side to the other and it's SO quiet. We stayed in the Phi Phi Hotel (recommended) which is one of the few places which did survive, other places are still being fixed up and new places are being built. Nice island, very relaxed and although it's only an hour away from Phuket on the ferry it's miles away from the hustle and horrid smells and phuket-ness of phuket. We found a lovely bar on the opposite side to where the ferry drops you - great back drop (one of the photos below), there is a really nice photo of rob and i sat on the chair with the sun setting in the background and our beers in hand. I won't put it up though as on closer inspection on the laptop you can see my pants. Sharn't be wearing that skirt again!!

Just the one night in Phi Phi and then a ferry, a taxi and a long boat to West Railay. West Railay is lovely too - it's that little bit more remote which makes it nice. The sand on the beach is so fine it's like flour, and with the clear sea and towering cliffs it's certainly a nice backdrop for a meal and a few beers!! We decided to stay here for four nights and then head back to Phi Phi before returning to Phuket to fly to Bangkok. Days were easily filled with lying on the beach, eating, drinking, playing frisbee and playing in the sea. The bungalow we stayed in didn't actually have air conditioning, but i think that's probably best for us as it's the first place so far that hasn't! It was a nice little place though and the resort has a nice pool and is right next to the beach on the nice side (west railay as opposed to east). One of the afternoons/evenings we started the drinking early to watch the sun go down on the beach. We continued through dinner and then decided to go around to the next beach to see what was happening over there. There are a couple of ways to the adjacent beachs, longtail is the easiest and the next option is climbing over the big rocks. By no means an easy feat. Earlier in the day we had gone exploring at the end of West Railay to see if we could get around to one of the beaches around. It was alot of climbing up on hands and knees and it ended in a steep slope upwards from the path (complete with ropes to pull yourself up on). After some persuasion i climbed up it (i actually don't have a problem climbing up, it's the down bits that bother me) and what a great view it was. Then we climbed down (slowly) as to get to the beach we were thinking you had to rock climb straight up - then climb through a cave. That actually sounded like fun but there was a bunch of really serious climbers there that were a little intimidating with their dirty trousers, funny shoes and clippy things. Anyway - back to the point. It appears after a few beers i'm not frightened of climbing down things! Rob made me climb (in the dark with a couple of torches) over the rocks instead of getting the nice relaxing longtail! It was actually quite fun - but i don't think it would have been half as quick if i hadn't had a few beers! One of the main reason we ended up coming to Krabi/Railay was to do some rock climbing, some sort of half day climbing or something. We never did get around to it, it seems all the sitting, relaxing, eating and drinking got in the way.

So we left Railay and headed back to Phi Phi for the night. We had tried to book accommodation on Phi Phi when we were in Railay but couldn't seem to find any that wasn't ridiculously overpriced but decided to go anyway. It's all about the adventure! :)

We ended up staying in a dodgy bungalow. The plus being that we were on a bit of the island that we hadn't seen before and the bars, resturants and beach were lovely! Plus it did have air conditioning which makes it less sweaty to pack the bags! In the evening we headed out and had dinner and cocktails in this very cool restaurant (photos below) and then watched a bit of fire-baton twirling. Though i'm sure it's got a much more manly name than that. After buying some trinkets the next day we hit the ferry and returned to smelly Phuket. Today we fly out to Bangkok for three days before getting back to Singapore.

To Singapore...

2006-03-01T09:30:00.000Z

Ahh, Singapore. Over the last three days this place has crept slowly up my list of favourite places... it's come to a halt somewhere near the very top and i'm very much looking forward to returning here after Thailand.

After arriving from a long 7 hour flight we navigated our way straight to the hostel with no problems. A good start! After dumping bags we headed out to Clark Quay - the place to be apparently (for those of you from home, it's kind of like Gunwarf!). We sat and ate some resonably priced food and expensive beer (of course, we're in Singapore now!) whilst perusing the many leaflets deciding what to do over the next three days.

The first day we headed out to find another hostel nearby as we also had to scout out somewhere to stay for our next visit and figured we should stay somewhere else to see what that's like, we decided not there, and i think we both came out of there feeling a little old. :)

Next we went to MacRitchie Park to go on a tree top walk through the forest. After we got there and walked about 1km we foudn a sign that said it was shut on mondays. Of course it was. So we ditched that idea in favour of lunch in China Town (mine was good, Rob's was crap) and then some muching about there... then up to Orchard Road which is a shoppers haven. I bought some trousers to make me look more of a traveller if that's possible, i'm sure they will show up in future photos. Anyway. From there we wandered back to the hostel and then showered and got ready to go and explore the Night Safari! OOoooo. It was really cool. The best bit was when we got off the tram thing that takes you around and walk a bit of the trail. There's on bit you can go in and walk about and see the fruit bats... They are massive! And i swear one nearly landed one me! It was nice to see the animals at night - most of the time you couldn't see the edges of the cages it was so dark - which is why i probably liked it better than the zoo.

Today we hung out at Sim Lim Square for a bit (slept in late - yeah!), had mexican for lunch and then wandered about in the sweltering heat. It's great! We stopped at the closest bar for some air conditioning and a beverage and found ourselves at a fancy coffee house with more varities of coffee that ever seen before!

Tonight we are off to get Indian food at a restaurant recommended to us by James (hi James!), so if it's crap, we can blame James! :) And we are of course packing. I think even Rob is getting bored of packing!

Tomorrow we are up at stupid o'clock to get our 7am flight to Phuket and tomorrow night we get on the boat bound for the Similan islands... everyone cross their fingers and think of whale sharks....

Clark Quay...

Look Mum, no coats!

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Rob @ Clark Quay...

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Temple..

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.. just down the road from our hostel.. pretty colours!

MacRitchie Park

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Mr Monkey in the park...

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Mr Lizard in the park...

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Sleeping Tiger, Hidden from Camera..

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Big tall buildings...

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.. and of course, BLUE SKY!!

Hot countries have cool plants...

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Coffee and cocktails..

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Kyoto to Osaka - the end of Japan..

2006-02-28T09:30:00.000Z

Well, we hung out for a few days in Kyoto, checking out the many temples and catching the odd glimps of a Giesha or Meiko... also got to do a bit of shopping. The weather in Kyoto wasn't that great, so when we had to check out on the last morning we decided that instead of staying in Kyoto for the day we would head on over to Osaka and see what was happening over there.

Osaka was a concrete nightmare! There were some nice places but on the whole i was very shocked at how so many buildings could fit into and onto the flat places. Alot of the buildings are old and don't exactly look that good. Then right smack in the middle of a built up area is a temple. It's fairly crazy.

Both Rob and i were actually a bit sick of Japan and it's weather by this point. We'd seen some great things and had some great days, but i'm the first to admit we are both warm weather people and therefore the cold and the rain wasn't welcomed with open arms.

Japan is definitely one of those places to go and visit - certainly makes you think about a whole load of things that we do that we consider normal. For example we are currently banning smoking inside buildings in the UK - yet here in japan they are trying to get people to stop smoking on the streets so everyone heads inside restaurants and bars to smoke - some places don't have a none smoking section to eat! To us that just seems strange!

Anyway - enjoy the last few photos of Japan, as we move onto warmer climates in south asia and bask in the sun for what seems the first time in forever (exactly 30 days from Caribbean!)....

One of the many Kyoto temples...

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Everyone wants a dragon fountain...

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Osaka...

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Down in the streets...

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of Gion, you find lovely old japanese houses and the occasional Geisha.

Toyko to Lake Kawaguchi to Hiroshima to Koyoto...

2006-02-24T01:10:00.000Z

We got up early on Monday and sorted out repacking all the bags (one at a time in our tiny room!) before heading out to Shinjuku Station to get the bus to Lake Kawaguchi - a bargain at 1700 yen. It took about two hours and after an hour we noticed when the bus stopped it was actually snowing outside.. By the time we got to Lake Kawaguchi it had been snowing for a good few hours and therefore our chances of getting to see a volcanoe that is some 3000m plus were very slim, especially as it was looking misty on the other side of the road. Undeterred we went down to the lake in the snow (with umbrellas!) and although the photo's didn't come out too good - the view was stunning. Mountians raised up behind the lake all covered in trees covered in snow - very pretty.

After returning to the room (japanese style - make your own bed from stuff in the cupboards and d.i.y. tea ceramony - see photos) we stupidly turned on the heat to warm the room up abit. i think after about 10 minutes we were both asleep - and we woke around 9.30 feeling very hungry (and warm)! I think the whole area (Fuji Five Lake District) is a bit 'come and visit in the summer' as there really wasn't anywhere open to get dinner. We finally settled on a feast from 7 Eleven, which definately compared favorably to most of the meals we've eaten so far, even in the restaurants!!!

We woke up this morning to more grey skies. No sign of that big mountain anywhere - so we gave up on the idea and headed to the station to get a bus ticket south to meet the bullet train we planned on taking to Hiroshima. The bus journey was about two hours and after we got to the other side of the mountains range we could see that it had actually only snowed on the side we were on. Dry roads, no snow on roofs etc. Better than that we could see Mount Fuji - well the bottom of it anyway, the top was in clouds. Luckily after another 20 minutes the skies went blue, the clouds moved and there was Mount Fuji!! Clearly the highlight of the trip so far! It only lasted for a few minutes before it clouded over again but that made all the effort of getting to the Five Lake District totally worth it.

Anyway - four hours and two Shinkansen (super fast bullet trains) later we arrived in Hiroshima. Home of the A-bomb attack August 6th 1945 (yes, rob dragged me to a museum to educate me) and one of the three beautiful sights of Japan - the Torii in the sea on the island of Miya-Jima. The ryokan we stayed at was very nice - small room but the woman who ran it was very sweet and it was in a prime location. It was about here a theme started to appear. We go specially to stay in a nice ryokan to see mount Fuji and it snows so we can't really see anything.... and when we looking for dinner on that first night it seems that Tuesday is the night to close your restaurant. I waved away the feeling that we were mildly cursed but it crept back the next day...

So up early and the sky was grey but it didn't matter too much - the sun was breaking through occasionally and it was much better than snow. It was MUCH warmer down this end of Japan too so that helped. Anyway off to Miya-Jima; a comination of funny trams (imported from Germany - used) and a ten minute ferry and we were there. The first thing we see out of the ferry terminal? A deer. A real one. Now, whilst i had read about the tame deer upon the island, i hadn't quite prepared myself for them being outside the station and walking along the pavements with the people, i.e. us. I think i giggled for a good 25 minutes after arrival.

After a good old look at the five story pagoda and the torii in the sea we set off for my personal highlight of the island (apart from the deer) - the scarey 1.7 km cable car up to the top of Mount Misen... ooooo. Hum. well, as we approached we keep seeing signs and then less and less people. Yes, the stupid cable car was under construction. When till? Feb 17 - 22. When we there? Feb 22. So no cable car - definitely a theme. Anyway - throwing caution, and possibly sense, to the wind (and slight drizzle) we decided that we would walk up the silly mountain. The trail was (from the bottom) 2.6km. That's not far. Except that it appeared to be (and was in the end) 2.6km of steps up. No real break inbetween. Time was taken to reflect on how we are so young, and yet so unfit. But - far be it from a little mountain to beat us, especially as it was our first 'trek' of the trip. So we kept going to the top - even when the drizzle turned to rain and we were getting a bit wet.

The next morning we packed up our stuff and headed for the a-bomb dome. This is one of only very few buildings to have survived the A-bomb. There's the obvious shape of the building and then one of the main bits is still there and on top is the metal frame of the dome that was on top of the building (hence A-Bomb Dome). Of course, becuase we were visiting they were doing some sort of sounding test on the building and therefore it was covered in scaffolding so you couldn't really see it that well. The theme continues. After there we walked throught the peace park and to the Peace Park Memorial Museum.

And from there to pick up our bags and head back to the station to catch our next shinkansen to Kyoto - home of old wooden houses and Giesha's and Gion, where the whole Giesha thing kicked off....

Japan...

2006-02-19T12:46:00.000Z

Well, we made it safely to Japan. After a hearty breakfast (see below), we had the energy to jump up after the seatbelt sign went off and secure two fabulous seats with leg room (see below - note the very sexy Virgin socks we both donned for the flight!) nearer the front of the plane. Good job too as both of us were orginally touching knees with the seat in front and i - of course - was behind a seat-putter-backer.

Anyway - Japan is.... different. A great place to come if you love a big city - real real easy to navigate around - even if you've had zero sleep in the last 24 hours. After thinking we were staying way out of everything because we are paying less, the hostel is actually located very nicely in the area of Asakusa. Walking distance to a fairly impressive temple with some massive lanterns. Right next to the subway station and all that good stuff.

Found some nice toilets and thought i'd be a real tourist and take a photo - needless to say, i ran along to the end and used the disabled toilet like any normal person would.

So the first day we skipped off to the center-ish and hit the tourist place to find out how to make the most of our 9 days here. After many trips back and forth we finally decided - booked some accommodation and made plans to stay in Tokyo for one more night - which means leaving tomorrow. For the mountains, or more specifically one mountain - Mount Fuji. After getting everything sorted we headed out for the Imperial Palace to see that - though you can't really get in that far, just sort of see bits and pieces. From here we walked about a bit, saw some fountains, more touristy things etc etc.

Today we headed out late and went to Shibuya, which is one of the most bizaar things i have ever seen. Young girls dress up in weird clothes and just sit there while people take photos of them. Not for money or anything. For fun. It's just plain odd. Anyway - see this photo below - which isn't really a true depiction of the situation as the one in the middle is clearly a forty year old guy in a frilly dress. Funny though! We were also treated to some thrilling dancing of the rock and roll kind by a bunch of crazy old guys dressed up just like John Travolta was for the film Grease. With pointy shoes. And they couldn't actually dance. Not in time with the music that was being played to us anyway - i'm sure they were right in time with that crazy music playing in their heads. :)

We then headed off on a nice walk upto a temple thing with nice wooden gate things called - no sorry i can't find it in the book. All very nice and foresty and miles away from what we encountered next - which was the crazy buying world of Shinjuku where it seems on a Sunday everyone who lives in Toyko comes out to walk about. Crazy town.

For dinner we settled on dinner that you cook yourself (for those of you in England, kind of like the Charbar in Port Solent - but more poncy), lovely bits of Japanese steak, much better than the soggy noodles in some sort of fishy water soup thing we had the other day!

So tomorrow we leave our little room - very very little, one of you has to be on the bunk bed for the other to move about - having said that, it's nice and cosy and warm, and of course the big seller - cheap! We are venturing down to the Five Lake District. By bus. Tomorrow at 12.10pm. Wish us luck and i will update when i have more photos and we stay at another place with free internet.

Chrissie-out. x

Tomorrow's the day!

2006-02-15T15:47:00.000Z

Well in 24 hours we will be aboard that beautiful silver bird of death on it's merry way to Japan. A lovely 12 hour flight is in store... made only slightly easier by the fact i've packed my travel scrabble and it's a good airline carrier.

Today i have spent the entire day packing and my bag is now so light and minimalistic it could go on display at Ikea. I've even had to pad it out a bit knowing if there's any obviosuly space i'll be overwhelmed by an urge to fill it with crap. Probably japanese crap as we are going there first!

Yesterday we finally booked our place to stay in Tokyo. But the itinary is fairly open after that if anyone has any ideas - you know the email address.

Next update will be from Japan! :)

Pride of Portsmouth...

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The Spinnaker Tower, known to locals as the 'millenium tower', but it was finished in Dec 05 so missed the deadline slightly for the actual millenium. Close though.

We went up the other day with the lovely British winter weather, clear blue skies and damn cold.

OFF TO JAPAN ON THURSDAY!

From the top..

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Spinnaker Tower

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HMS Warrior & HMS Victory...

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Victory's in the background, Warrior is the one you can see easily!

Me & the Wolff...

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...about to go skating.

This is a big silver bean.

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I'm not sure why it's there.

How cool is....

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...skating outside? With a bunch of skyscrapers in the background? Well cool.

Strange acoustic arrangment...

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...and the funny building with the gap in it.

Navy Pier by night

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Our hotel...

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That rectangle of purple lights in the centre of the photo is our hotel lobby.

Driving into the city at night...

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Lake Shore Drive, in no way is this photo supposed to reflect the driving ability of Jen Wolff.

The one true thing....

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I will miss from the US...... 10 cent chicken wing night.

View from hotel window

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Not bad for $50!

Blue Spotted Rays

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Frogfish...

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Little easier to spot in the tank than the wild! :)