EnZed

Land of the sheep, shiiiit scary activities and schmeeedle, we're in New Zealand! We flew into Christchurch on the south island to kick off our four and a bit weeks here (we fly out on Jan 5th). Accommodation in Christchurch was in a B&B called 'Wish' which was recommended in the Lonely Planet guide, it turned out to be a good choice as the couple running it, Ngarie (Pronounced Nerrie) and Gary were top people and laid on superb organic breakfasts and home made bread, cheese an other nice stuff. They were hooked into the NZ music scene and their daughter is in a band called 'Bang Bang Eche' who are apparently doing pretty well, their latest album has got an interesting name....

Christchurch is a fairly small place and, as lots of people have said before, has a very English feel about it. We walked around the place, took the old tram and even went for a punt on the river - all very civilised! There is visible damage from the recent earthquake but not much considering its size, apparently there is far more damage which cannot be seen and loads of people are still not able to return to their homes. Because of the earthquake risk, part of every building insurance premium goes to the government who cover the first 100k of any claim (they are up to about 200,000 building insurance claims so far and it will take years for them all to be processed).

Gary is the greenkeeper at one of the local golf courses in Christchurch and he organised a round of golf for the second day we were there, i hadn't played in a while but didn't disgrace myself (He plays off a 4 handicap so is pretty handy).

We hired a car in Christchurch and drove to Akoroa on the coast which has a strong French influence to it - the story is that it was the French who first landed in this region and then went back to France to collect more people to start a colony. On their return they found that we (The British) had signed an agreement to place NZ under our control only days earlier. They had to agree to be British citizens in order to stay, which they did and hence the French influence.

We took a boat trip out to the mouth of the inlet and swam with some of the local wild dolphins (yeah man!), they are called Hector dolphins and are the smallest dolphins found anywhere, according to the guide they may not even be around in 20 years from now.  We were told that rather than us being entertained, we had to entertain the dolphins in order for them to be interested in us and stick around so there was a bunch of us in the water making some ridiculous sounds, singing and generally trying to attract them to swim with us.

Next up was Lake Takepo (that name didn't get boring for a while!) where we kayaked and climbed the local peak to the Mt John Observatory. By this time we were getting the point that NZ is all about the scenery, everywhere you look it is stunning.

The lake itself is a very bright blue colour due to finely ground rock in the glacial melt water (There's three lakes like it) and it almost glows when the sun shines on it.

The following day we drove to Mt Cook which is NZ's highest mountain and I think the highest in all Australasia. There was a fair bit of cloud around when we got there so we couldn't see the mountain but the next morning it had cleared luckily so when we walked the track up to the glacial lake we had blue skies and towering mountains all around......that'll be another 100 photos....

Onwards to Wanaka but first we stop in Queenstown for lunch as we have some time spare. Queenstown is the adventure sports capital of NZ which means you've got a big menu of activities on offer and you've just got to find the stones to do the biggest one you can handle.......i couldn't find extreme lawn bowls on offer anywhere.....

Wanaka is about an hours drive north of Queenstown, we had been in contact with a uni friend of Nina's sister who lives just outside and found our way to their place that afternoon. Ben's place is on a big piece of land in the hawea flat area and he has spent the last year renovating his place and just moved back in a couple of days ago.  Ben and Robyn his wife were kind enough to let us stay and they have a Woofing hut (woofing is a scheme for travellers etc who get to stay on organic farms in return for some work each day) on their land, which we slept in.  It is very rustic and candles light the inside, with animals outside in the morning and the most amazing stars at night, as the area is known for astronomy.  We even got up in the middle of the night around 3am and just stood outside the hut in amazement of the sky which was lit up with stars.


Whilst we were in Wanaka we went Canyoning which basically involves getting in a super thick wetsuit, abseil harness and helmet then walking up a hill and coming back down via a thin and steep water canyon by a combination of abseiling, sliding, jumping, crawling and zip-wiring. It was great fun!

From Wanaka we returned to Queenstown to stay for a few nights and try some more activities. We booked into a small backpackers place which was right on the lake with really nice views and a pretty good social area. It made a change to meet some other travellers & get some info on other places in NZ we want to visit.

I'd been looking for a place to get out on a motorbike since back in Oz and we found a company in QT that had them so we booked on. After a quick practice and assessment they took us out into trails with jumps and then up into the hills and really let you ride as hard as you want and except for bike boots and helmet they don't bother with any protective stuff.

Next up in QT was a day out on some mountain bikes, we rode out to a spot where the local club look after a load of trails which anyone can use. We had been told it was a 30 min ride to the trails but it took over an hour, i found out when we got there that my bike had it's brakes on the opposite sides so almost went over the front on the first downhill!  Even so we still got a some good runs in and even managed some of the woodwork, albeit the small stuff.

By this point we noticed that we were using the word 'awesome' an awesome number of times......

From Queenstown we did an overnight trip to Milford Sound where we went out on a boat, as it is the thing to do there. There are cliffs, waterfalls, dolphins, seals and penguins to be seen so it's a great looking place and we lucked in with a sunny day but of all the places we've seen so far in NZ i think it's just slightly overhyped.

The drive to it from Te Anau is amazing however.

On the way back we picked up a couple of tired Israeli hitchhikers (a lot of people hitchhike in NZ) and dropped them to their campsite in Te Anua, just before dropping them off i almost mowed down a sheep that had wandered onto the road, that woke them up....

We drove back into Queenstown on fumes (in neutral on the downhills) and booked back into the same backpackers for one night before we head off to the west coast which is where we are now......

Australia.....

The Deep Blue Aussie Ocean...

Our five weeks in Australia ended and we're now in New Zealand, the last time we 'spoke' we were in Airley Beach and about to go out on a sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands.......

Airley is a proper backpacker place with lots of hostels, bars and places selling tours. The main area is pretty much a single street, some might call it tacky but it was lively and we enjoyed it (despite the rain). Our time there also coincided with 'Schoolies Week' which is a bit like the Australian version of spring break. This meant there were shed loads of 17-18 yr olds descending on the place to basically go mental! Apparently schoolies week is mainly centred on the gold coast so we got off pretty lightly. We saw them all arrive and then lucky for us left for the Whitsundays. Although before our departure I decided the 'mo' had to go!! Was starting to look like a cross between 'magnum' (as Jen pointed out!) and someone in zee German army..

Our boat for the sailing trip was a catamaran and we shared it with six other passengers and two crew. All of the other passengers were German, an older couple and four 20-something friends, but we managed to avoid any Fawlty Towers moments! The weather wasn't brilliant so we didn't get to see the islands as you see them in the pictures but it was still a great trip. We snorkeled over the reef and saw some awesone fish, it was stinger season (Stingers are deadly jellyfish - nice! The whole Queensland coast is affected at this time of year) so we were wearing wetsuits but no-one was stung. I was going to do my first scuba dive but the visibility wasn't great because of the weather (both the lack of sun and the run-off water from the islands) and it wasn't cheap so i stuck to the snorkelling.

After the sailing trip we left Airley and headed up towards Cairns. We stopped in Port Douglas for a couple of nights which is just north of Cairns and spent a day driving around the tablelands visiting waterfalls.

In Cairns we booked onto a boat out to the great barrier reef, the trip we booked took us out to a set of reefs called 'Agincourt' which are right out on the edge of the reef next to the continental shelf and supposedly one of the best areas to go to. The weather was forecast to be pretty average (again!) but we lucked in with a blue sky day and hardly any wind which meant the boat could go to the best dive spots on the outside of the reef. I decided to do my intro dive at the first spot, we went down to about 11m and looked down over the first drop of the continental shelf which went down about another 50m. The water was super clear compared to the Whitsundays, and the reef itself far more interesting, also we only needed to wear lycra stinger suits rather than wetsuits which was a bonus. On the way back up i bumped into 'Wally' the resident giant Maori wrasse fish which is about 3ft long with a massive head and huge lips, a right looker!

At the other two dive spots we snorkeled and saw loads more fish, a turtle and a small reef shark. One of the guys from the boat came out and gave a snorkel safari, he'd basically see stuff we couldn't notice like a sea cucumber and then free dive down about 30ft to the bottom and grab it for us to look at.

Back in Cairns we checked out the night life and had a few beers in a local micro brewery. That's when we noticed the bats, Cairns has a resident population of giant fruit bats that live in the trees in the town centre, their wingspan must be about 3 feet. We left the following morning and flew back down to Sydney - you get a great view of the reef when you fly out of Cairns airport. We were in Sydney for one night, had drinks and food with Christel and Adam in Kings Cross which is where we were staying and then left the next day for New Zealand.. A bit of a shock from the 33 degrees we left in Cairns, to 16 degrees in Christchurch.....brass monkeys!

A Retrospective...........

All Aboard HMS PrickleFingers.........

Hi all. We arrived in Sydney on Thurs 28th Oct so we've now been in Oz for just over 3 weeks. We stayed with Nina's uni friend, Christel, for the first couple of nights. It was great to see Christel, it had been over 5 years since Nina last saw her. Christel lives in Coogee which is south of the city centre and a couple of bays down from Bondi. It's got a great beach on which we ate our lunch when we arrived.

We did the Sydney harbour bridge climb, even though it was damn expensive (turns out everything in Oz is now!) we had to do it, couldn't come to Sydney for a second time and still not get up there!

After a couple of days with Christel we picked up our home for the next month, the campervan. For one reason and another we ended up with something a little different to what we had planned. We've christened it 'HMS PrickleFingers' because its roughly the size of an aircraft carrier and has a slightly worse turning circle.  It's a six birth with leather seats, flatscreen tv, dvd player, stereo with internal and external speakers, hob, oven, grill, microwave, air con, electric awning, toilet, shower and fridge! They must have needed it back in Cairns or something because we didn't pay the full price, just what we were going to pay for a smaller one.

Christel and Adam - Coogee Beach

Our first night camping was actually still in Sydney because we went for dinner at the house of a friend i used to work with, James, from London who now lives in Oz. James and his wife Isabelle served up a cracking meal on their balcony which has a view over the whole of Syndey, the lucky buggers.

From Sydney we travelled north, ending up in the Lower Hunter Valley after a couple of days. There's only one real reason to come to visit the Hunter Valley and thats for the wine. The local speciality is semillon and they do good shiraz also. We went on a wine tasting tour, with drinking starting at about 10am! To be fair they make a big point of drinking water between each glass and it was by no means a p!ss-up. It was a good day out, we bought a couple of bottles and also saw our first wild Kangaroos.

Before we left Hunter we popped into the McGuigan wines cellar door and picked up a couple of bottles, had to eh, no discount tho, surely i'm family or something?!

From Hunter we left for Byron Bay with a lunch stop planned in Port McQuarrie. It was a long lunch......3 days long actually. We stumbled across a campsite on the waters edge whilst walking off lunch and decided it looked like a good place to stay, so we booked in and took the camper round.  There was a boardwalk that went along the coast around the headland and we used this for the first runs of the trip, which hurt a bit...

We left Port McQuarrie and drove 400km upto Byron Bay which immediately felt like the coastal australia we were hoping for. Byron Bay is awesome, it has a great beach, good food and bars, nice people and a general relaxed atmosphere. We took a surfing lesson on the second day.... i stood up first go...ahem.....Nina did great too. The Aussie lad instructor was a good guy, properly living the surfing life, the day before our lesson Kelly Slater won his 10th world title so all morning all he kept shouting was 'Kelly Slater Day!!! Wooooooo'. The 3 times surfing world champ Andy Irons had died a few days earlier also, on his own in a hotel in Texas of all places, so the surfer dudes were all talking about it.

Byron also has a great coastal walk up to a lighthouse (the biggest on the east coast apparently) and includes a section which is the most easterly point in Australia. On the walk we saw migrating humpback whales and tons of dolphins which was a bit special.   

From Byron we moved up to Brisbane and in the process crossed from New South Wales into Queensland, we didn't stay long, just enough to see the city for a day. Walking back to the camper in the campsite on the second night, Nina felt something on her foot and looked down to find a tiny 'snake'! She kicked it off and it wriggled away, it was only about 10 inches long and we weren't able to find out exactly what it was, but it defo looked like a small snake!

North of Brisbane is the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise, we didn't visit either of these because, although popular, from what we'd read they are pretty average. We did stop briefly in Coolangatta though so i could take a snap of Kirra and say i'd been there (Neil/Rich - it was no good, small and onshore).

The next overnight stop after Brisbane was Noosa and before we got there we stopped at Australia Zoo (the late Steve 'Crikey' Irwin's zoo).

We went straight to the 'Crocosium' (yep, thats what its called!) to see the live show, past all the free roaming lizards and other creatures on the paths. The zoo was good, perhaps not quite as good as we were expecting but still worth the visit. Rather than the crocodiles it was the birds which were perhaps the most impressive, they had some huge eagles as well as a lot of other fairly large tropical birds. 

Our next stop was Noosa. Noosa is a bit different to the other places we'd been to on east coast as it's a bit flashy and upmarket. It has lots of waterways with houses backing onto them with boats moored and i guess you could say it's a bit like the Miami of the east coast. It's a got a great main beach, and another spectacular coastal path around the headland where we saw planty of dolphins, turtles and a manta ray.

We did a day trip to Fraser Island from Noosa in a 4x4, it's an island just off the south Queensland coast and is entirely made of sand. The weather wasn't great but it was still a good day out. We swam in Lake McKenzie which is apparently the purest water you'll find pretty much anywhere. Driving along the waters edge on the beach at 100Kms was pretty good also. We came across a turtle on the beach and so stopped to check it out, turns out it had got itself tangled in some fishing line and one of it's front flippers was completely missing with just a stump of bone where it used to be, poor little fella. The driver did what he could, cutting off the line and calling it in to the national parks people who came out to get it.

After Noosa we headed to a much smaller place called Town of 1770, named coz that's the year us British landed there.  We managed to get a spot in a campsite right on the beach, which was great as in the evenings loads of people set up fires on the beach.  There was a big backpacker community here and so we tried to blend in, as much as we could being at least half their age again!

We did the scooteroo tour which was a good laugh, the bikes are choppers with big monkey bar handlebars and you get given the leather jacket, helmets and tats if you want them.  Covered about 65k on them touring around checking out the wild kangas & wallabies.  Bikes get up to about 80Kms if pushed, with head between handlebars!  Didn't like the whippersnappers passing me - turned into a right kid. 

That night we decided to go to the surf club party, which was interesting to say the least!  Lots and lots of very young people, all competing in limbo competitions and other, lets just say 'different' party games consisting of little clothing... in order to win a whistsunday trip - all just part of being young, but Nina & I did not partake in such frivolity!!  At least we managed to hang out with some of the guys from the scooteroo tour and we had a good chat and few beers into the night.


We hit the road then to Airlie Beach which was a good solid driving session covering a bit over 700K, and arrived to be greeted with rain and pretty much rain ever since we have been here..  Now heading off to the Whitsunday islands to sail around them for the next 2 days, weather looking a bit better but hoping for a bit more sun for the scuba diving so the water is nice and clear......

Will update on this on our return... 

Bali: Beaches, Bikes, Bonkers Driving and Bintang Bogans

I'm lying in the back of the camper we've hired for our time in Oz, reminiscing about our 10 days in Bali and it seemed liked a good time to post an update on our trip. We left Hong Kong on Monday 17th Oct, a day after J&D because we couldn't get on the same flights. On arriving we were met by Melissa, a friend we know through Jen who lives on the island and she had kindly offered to take us to the hotel in her car. This is when we first encountered the bonkers driving.

The rule of the road in Bali seems to be that you can do whatever you like, and no-one can get annoyed or angry with you for doing it. If you need to pull out on to a main road, don't bother waiting for a gap in the traffic, you just pull out and expect everyone else to get out of your way, which they do. In the end i came to the conclusion that it's actually pretty effective and it keeps the traffic moving on all the roads. This approach applies to both cars and motorbikes alike.........

Motorbikes (or mopeds mostly) are everywhere and usually not where you expect them to be. I'm sure the Balinese moped rider has developed a riding technique that actually defies the laws of physics, they can fit a moped through gap that is actually smaller than the moped itself and can do this whilst travelling at 50mph and with up to 5 (yes five) people on board. The standard, no door family moped in Bali has a seating configuration of mother on the back holding a baby, father driving and up to two small children standing in the footwell between fathers legs, one of them can even be asleep on handlebars!. No crash helmets required. Mental.

We got to our hotel in Sanur on the west coast of Bali at about 3pm and met up with J&D again. The hotel had screwed up their booking slightly and had given them a twin room instead of a double, not ideal considering this holiday was effectively their honeymoon......

In case you didn't know, because of it's location Bali is the Aussie equivalent of Spain and therefore the vast majority of tourist are from Australia. Sanur is smaller and quieter than Kuta (the main tourist resort) and therefore has far less Aussie's and therefore hardly any 'Bogans'. A Bogan is pretty much an Aussie chav and they can be spotted easily enough by their holiday attire which pretty much consists exclusively of a Bintang (The local Bali lager) vest or 'wife-beater'.

For the six days we were in Sanur we relaxed at the hotel, soaked up the sun, had massages and went out for a few meals. Mel's boyfriend, Jasper, manages a bar in Seminyak on the opposite side of Bali (just above Kuta) called Ku De Ta which is seriously cool so we went there a couple of times. Alcohol in Bali has had a huge rise in tax recently and now attracts about 4-500% in duty meaning it's damn expensive to go out for a night in bars and restaurants - travel budget firmly lobbed out of the window.......

After J&D left to go back to HK we moved over to Seminyak to sample a few other areas of Bali. We hired a moped from Mel and Jasper's neighbours. I say 'hired', it was more like we borrowed it for a few days. No forms to sign, no driving license shown, just a few notes handed over in exchange for the keys and a couple of lose fitting helmets. Having experienced the Bali roads only in a 'Taksi' up to that point, it took a couple of runs to get fully comfortable but we were soon getting around easily enough and it was actually great fun.

A big thing in Bali is going for cocktails/drinks to watch the sunset on the west coast. After walking Mel's dog, London - a lab/rottweiler cross, along the beach for half an hour or so we stopped at a little beach shack bar. The bar itself was actually a trailer that arrives and leaves each day and sits next to a wooden frame under which the tables and chairs are set-up. A couple of beers and cocktails later and we were treated to a great sunset over the waves.

We hired a chap with a car the next day and did a quick tour of some inland areas: the Water Temple, Ubud, views of Mt Agung and Lake Batur, Monkey Forest (more of a Monkey Footpath in truth) and some rice paddies.

The Water Temple had some interesting 'fertility' souvenirs on the way out.......

The rice paddies were pretty spectacular, we didn't see them in full wet season but they were still an awesome sight. We sat at a little bar on the hill and had a bintang each taking in the view......

We left for Oz on Wed 24th and that's where we are now.........

Hong Kong Hangovers

Hi all. We arrived in Hong Kong on Wednesday 13th after a decent flight and were met by Jen at the airport which was great, after not having seen her for 9 months..

Happy Valley Racecourse was the venue for our first outing and it was cracking. Having not long gotten off a long haul flight, the huge buzzing crowds, bars and food outlets under the floodlights was a slightly surreal experience. A few HKD lighter, a few beers heavier and a good catch-up with Jen & Dave we headed back to their apartment for a decent kip........then someone opened the Jagermiester.......with two door cinema club blaring and quite a few shots later we were joined by the neighbours who were less than pleased and as we found out some days later wanted to call the police!!!  Oops....   

Jen & Dave live in a very local area of Kowloon called 'Kwun Tong', where Dave is the only 'Gwi-Low' in the village.  We took a short stroll through the park on our first day and got a lot of stares from the locals.  The next few days were taken up by strolling around the streets of HK, taking in the atmosphere, the markets, lots of drinking in lang-kwai-fong, the mid-levels, soho and knutsford terrace.  As with most Asian cities, HK is awash with bright lights at night and together with the heat, traffic and bustling crowds just walking the streets is interesting in itself.  One thing we will say tho is...'No, i don't want a very special tailored suit!'.

On Thursday evening we were taken for an eight course banquet chinese meal by Jen's mum Mabel near Tsim Sha Tsui. We struggled with the cold jellyfish and duck feet, but managed to try both, although seeing daffy ducks webbing meant only the toe was possible... Went to a great bar at the top of a skyscraper with easily the best view of any city bar we have ever been to.  Then took in some local dining around 3am at the Dai Pai Dong near Jen and Dave's apartment for some of the best Dim Sum we have had, with Nina wanting her favourite 'Sing Jut Gung', and ordering the chickens feet accidentally!

The next day we discovered a classic video i'd taken of us standing outside the Dusk 'till Dawn bar at 2am, Nina's dancing and singing to the chorus of 'Tragedy' had us laughing all day. 

Next destination Bali...