2004/2005 Trip around Australia, NZ and Thailand

After the last blog entry, we went out for a brazilian meal near the harbour. As a vegetarian, I've decided to take a stance on brazilian restaurants: Just say no! On the plus side, they had some Mudhouse wine, which is one of the vineyards we visited in the Marlborough region. This mostly managed to wash away the taste of the meal...mostly.

The following day, we resolved to be a bit touristy and lost no time in finding 'Mount Eden', the highest of the extinct volcanoes that are all over Auckland. The views from the top were spectacular as you could see both the city and the harbour sprawled out at your feet. Afterwards, we drove out to Kelly Tarltons underwater world, and were quite disappointed with what we saw - the penguins were cool, as penguins always are, but the rest of it consisted of a smallish fish tank (okay, small only when compared with any of the ones in Sydney aquariam) with some disconsolate stingrays trying to find a way out of it, and then a small badly lit walkthrough tunnel where you could see a couple of fish around the place. If I'd never seen Sydney Aquariam and never dived in my life, I might have enjoyed it, but as it was I was storming around the place going 'Is this it ??!?'.

Ah well. After that we had some lunch and then went to meet my cousin Robin for a coffee, which was nice. It's very strange meeting these strange people who you don't know, but who know lots of people in common with you...very strange. It was nice to catch up, however briefly, and I'm not sure when I'll see them again, which is a bit sad.

After that, we went out for dinner to a Mehican restaurant near the Sky tower. I was quite curious to try a mexican as I haven't gone out for one in aaaages, and so wanted to compare it to my own personal take on mexican cuisine. The result: Marty's enchiladas are the best, as verified by at least two unbiased neutral observers. After dinner, we got the lift up the Sky Tower to get a view of the city at night. It probably suffered by comparison to the Orbit Bar in Sydney, and also by the fact that we were the only customers, but the bar was a bit atmosphere-less. The views went some way to making up for it however!

The following day, we drove to Manukau to drop off our trusty RAV4 and get the shuttle to the airport. Our flight to Sydney was uneventful and at the other end we picked up a massive Toyota Torago to use to move around our vast number of possessions that we had stashed in safe houses all over Sydney. We drove into town to pick up Leah and then went back to theirs to spend an hour or two repacking (we decided to leave most of our mismatched crockery etc behind!) we had a delicious meal with Paul and Leah and then slept the sleep of the jet-lagged by 2 hour.

In the morning we drove out to Dave's factory workplace to pick up his keys and then went to his to pack up the rest of our stuff. It was quite hairy trying to pack it all in, and when a friend of Lorraine's rang to let us know that he'd gotten us a fabulously cheap deal on the freight it was a big relief as we could add a couple more boxes worth of stuff onto the 'must keep' pile .

After the packing was complete and delivered to Lorraine's office, we filled out all the paperwork and went (at last) to the Bar 7 pub to meet up with everybody for a drink. Sarah, Tim, Simon, Brenda, John, Dave, Dave, Lorraine, Kylie, Paul, Leah and Ed all met us there and it was great to see them all again, as we hadn't originally planned on a sneaky visit to Sydney. We ended up back in the old classic 'Strand Hotel' which both Dave and I are VIP members of...*ahem*.

We stayed in Balmain that night (thanks again to Lorraine for lending us her room), and had tea with them in the morning before going to pick up Dave for yet another 'one last breakfast at Roys'. It was yum, and we went straight to the airport afterwards. It was unreasonably easy to say goodbye to everyone as we will be seeing almost all of the Sydneysiders within the next couple of weeks for various weddings back in the auld sod.

Our flight was delayed by 3 hours, but on the plus side I used up my two free invitations to the Qantas Club airport lounge (courtesy of frequent flyer points) and so the wait was made somewhat easier due to the free drinks and snacks, as well as the very comfortable no-screaming-kids lounge...

We slept most of the flight and upon arriving in Bangkok airport we were accosted by hundreds of people wanting to give us a taxi ride into the city. I whipped out the Lonely Planet to learn about the 'right way' to get a taxi into the cab and so we joined a queue of 100 people in the 'public taxi' queue. We joined forces with an English guy in the queue ahead of us, who almost convinced us that paying five times the normal rate was okay and our bags in the back of a cab until I said No, this is too dodgy for me, and we re-joined the queue. Eventually we got into a cab and the guy tried about 10 scams on us, but eventually we ended up at our lovely luxurious five star hotel, which was cheaper then most hostels we had stayed at in NZ and Australia...

The following day we went down for a huge buffet breakfast which we followed with a leisurely dip in the pool. Thus fortified, we stepped out into the city with the plan of walking to the Ko Sahn road, an area made famous by 'The Beach' and where the bulk of backpackers go. After walking for several blocks and making no discernable progress, although we were melting from the heat, we gave in and flagged a cab. We spent the afternoon soaking up the ambience and browsing in the various markets before getting another cab across town to go to an Indian restaurant called 'Indian Hut', which had roughly the same logo as 'Pizza Hut', plus the same font...very suspicious! The food was nice however, and afterwards we got a cab to the 'Banyan Tree' to go to their bar on the 59th floor. Egads. Gadzooks. Yegods. Etc. Words cannot describe how amazing this bar is. It is aptly called the 'Vertigo Bar' as it is on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree hotel and ... open air. We were walking up the stairs and I noticed the temperature rise sharply and thought 'what! Surely the aircon isn't broken' when I looked up and saw the moon!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it. Our table was right next to the edge and there was only a little iron bar between us and a 61 storey drop. We made a couple of nervous jokes about 'imagine abseiling down that' or 'imagine tight rope walking on that bar', but it was too scary to laugh about. It put you right at the edge of your comfort zone and you never quite manage to forget where you are and how high the drop is that is two feet to your right. Without a doubt, it is the most amazing, spectacular, mind blowing bar I have ever been to in my entire life. I would insist that anybody who travels to Bangkok goes there as it is is stupendous. I spent at least half the time I was there going 'I can't believe this' and 'This is sooo cool'. However, after my first drink, I was pretty anxious to leave . It isn't called the Vertigo bar for nothing...

The following day we had another huge breakfast and then got a cab across town to the area containing the main attractions - the Grand Palace, Wat Po and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. I aimed the cab to a place which also had several good places for lunch, and on the way down to one of these places to eat we met a 'nice' Thai lady who said she wanted the chance to practice her english on us. She also told us that all of the Grand Palace, Wat Po and Emerald Buddha were 'closed for cleaning' and that there were much better attractions at various other places. At about this time a 'Tuk-Tuk' driver approached and suddenly we had the offer of seeing them all at a huge discount! Lucky us!! Fortunately, the LP has warnings about this scam, so we distangled ourselves and headed down to the Palace etc. They were all truly spectacular, and hopefully some of my photos will do it justice.

After that, we got a boat ride down to a Sky train station. The boat ride was a bit of an eye opener as the property looking out on the river is all quite delapitated and there were 'things' floating in the water. The three-eyed fish from the Simpsons would not have looked out of place! To recover from the experience we went into the Shangri-La luxury hotel for a drink in their lobby, which was nice, before getting the Skytrain back to our hotel. We had grand plans for that evening, but Sue crashed after a shower so we just had room service and an early night. In the morning we had our third and final huge breakfast before going for a swim in both swimming pools and then catching a cab to the airport for our flight to Ko Samui.

We had some small scares, when we heard our flight was cancelled and then we were charged for excess baggage (all my dive gear is with us in 'the red bag' - not that I've used it yet!), but eventually got to Ko Samui where we got a cab to Big Buddha to catch the ferry to Koh Phangan. From the ferry pier in Haad Rin we got a cab to Ban Tai where we checked into our lovely air con bungalow before walking down to my sister Shevauns' animal clinic (www.pacthailand.org) to meet her for the first time in about a year and a half. Great to see her again and we had dinner on the balcony of her bungalow together with a few beers.

The following day I got a quick lesson in how to drive a motor cycle before we did a lap of the island to check out where we should move on to next. Sue was riding pillion behind Shev, and I was concentrating on following her tail light. We saw a few places and decided to move to one called 'Coral Bay' which is a nicely isolated little place on the north of the island. It has an eating area which looks out on a lovely bay and a great view of the sunset, which swung it for me. Apparently mum had stayed there before for two weeks and also had a really nice time. On the way back to Ban Tai it started to rain and the road conditions were a bit hairy - I had a couple of scares on the bike I can tell you! Eventually we made it to Thong Sala and had dinner in a little restaurant there before heading back home.

The following day we moved all our stuff to Coral Bay, and our rucksacks immediately exploded to fill all available stuff - it currently looks as if we could fill fifteen rucksacks with the stuff we have piled everywhere! The routine in Coral Bay is to spend lots of time on the beach, in your hammock, or eating delicious food in the restaurant, and it has been a relaxing few days. The only break from routine was a trip down to Haad Rin for the Full Moon Party, which is apparently the biggest beach party in the world. It was a good night, and fueled by much Thai red bull, which allowed us to stay up and reasonably alert until about 7am, when we turned for home. We had a delicious breakfast of fried eggs on brown rolls and tea and then turned in for a few hours kip.

Apart from that, the four days we have spent there have all been fantastically relaxing, and remarkable only by the fact that the generator only goes on at 6pm and off again at midnight. This means that we have no air con and it can get a little warm at night, even with all the doors, windows and curtains open and a light breeze disturbing the mozzie net. We've decided that we deserve a little more comfort for the last week of our little holiday and so are going to move back to our original bungalow in Ban Tai for a couple of days before moving to an even more luxurious one elsewhere for the very last couple of days.

I hope everyone is doing well, and I look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Marty

Sadly, our time in New Zealand is drawing to a close. It's been a fantastic holiday and we have already begun planning the kinds of things we'd like to do when we come back (a guided Milford Sound walk, a full day caving in Waitamo, an overnight cruise in Doubtful sound to name but a few!). It's hard to describe how relaxing and beautiful the whole holiday here has been and I am so glad that we decided to skip Cambodia and Laos to have an extra couple of weeks here!

At the end of the last blog entry, we were in Dunedin, and had just spent the night in the Kiwi's Nest, a hostel which is up there on our list of 'worst hostels in the Antipodes'. We decided to spend a second day there to check out the Otago museum, as I wanted to see just how big a Japanese spider crab really is (they have one as an exhibit)! I had read about it when I was about 8 in the 'Childcraft' or 'Mindcraft' - can't remember which - books that we had, where it mentioned that it had the body the size of a basketball, and it's front pincers were up to 2 metres long. The one they had probably wasn't quite that big, but it was big enough not to disappoint! Whew, I wouldn't want to come across one while diving, I can tell you! Although, I'd probably have more luck seeing one then bloody stone fish - a species which I still doubt actually exists.

After that, we checked into a fairly anonymous motel and went for a game of squash (and we are now the proud owners of our very own squash ball, which the squash place made us purchase!). Sue didn't manage to win a game, but handled the repeated losses with good grace, although she was lucky that one of the times she threw her racquet at the wall it didn't rebound and split her head open. And I'm sure that some of her phrases were educating the people playing in the court next to ours!

The following day we went up to Baldwin street, the steepest street in the world, for a walk, and wow - if you lived there you would have calves of steel. A bit of an ordeal! After that, we hit the highway and drove to Christchurch, where we stayed at a nice hostel called the Foley Towers. After we cooked some dinner and had a game of chess, we went into town in search of some Christchurch night life. We ended up following the same route through the city as we had the last time we were there with Charlie and Dee, and had the same difficulty discovering anywhere with a bit of life. At one stage we walked through Cathedral Square and were entertained by a glue sniffing mad man as he attempted to kick down the huge door to the Cathedral while shouting 'Open the Door!' in a plaintive voice. He insisted that it was 'Part of the Treaty' that he be allowed to enter. Quite entertaining, in a slightly unsettling kind of way, but he was quickly bundled off by the police. We eventually found a reasonably nice pub which was buzzing - there were 5 other people there, but it seemed to be the most lively place we could find. Well, we had passed another bar, but it had a huge sign outside saying 'No gang paraphernalia', which didn't really inspire confidence.

The following day we went out to the International Antarctic Centre near the airport, to get a sample of what life would have been like had our applications with the Australian Antarctic Division not been rejected. It was a fantastic little place, which we started with a ride in a Haggland snow mobile thingie over an obstacle course which included hills with 45 degree slopes, a crevice, and most worrying of all, a three meter deep pond! The Haggland handled it all with ease, although we were a bit worried when it nose-planted into the pond and we sat there with water coming up to the level of the windows while it's amphibious equipment slowly deployed! Great fun though!

The exhibition also included a 'storm room' where we could get a sample of what life would be like during a 'Weather Condition 1' storm. It was very cold, with wind chill dropping the temperature down below -20 degrees. Thankfully they gave us big jackets and gloves, but even so, phew, it was cold! There were about 20 people in the huge room with us, but Sue and I were the only ones who sought refuge in the igloo made of fresh snow . The rest of the exhibition was also good, but was mostly stuff I already knew, as I've got several books and DVDs about Antarctica to accompany my dream of going there for a few months (maybe even a year to 'winter over' through the six months of darkness!).

After that we went back into Christchurch for lunch and a stroll around their Arts Centre, which was one of the few things we liked about Christchurch. It was full of things like a potter making bowls, jewelry makers etc. Fortunately, I managed to strong-arm Susan out of most shops whenever I spotted her making her way to a cashier with her arms laden down with goods, and her credit card screaming for help from her handbag...

From Christchurch, we had a leisurely drive up to Kaikora where we were planning on going whale watching. We spent the night in a lovely hostel, then found out the next day that the whale watching trips had all been cancelled due to the weather. It was quite windy, but it was a lovely clear sunny day, so we spent it walking around the cliff tops and sea lions colonies just to the south of the town. It was gorgeous, with the sun glinting off the blue blue sea and snow capped peaks behind the town. Great stuff, but I preferred our experiences with the seals at Waipapa and Slope point when we were the only people there.

From Kaikora we drove up to the heart of the Marlborough wine region where we had decided to treat ourselves to a couple of days staying in a cottage on a vineyard, something we hadn't ever done before. It was a lovely place, surrounded on all sides by vineyards, so we booked ourselves a wine tour for the following day and settled in for a nice meal and a bottle of wine. The following day, we went on our wine tour and were a bit disconcerted to find that all of our fellow wine samplers were American! They all turned out to be very nice, and we had a great day sampling wines a plenty. Since the region is most renowned for it's whites and in particular it's Sauvignon Blancs, we tried many whites which was a nice change from our usual preference for reds! That evening we were invited by our hosts to the main house to sample some of their own wines. They were a nice couple, but he was a scot from Aberdeen who is an expert at everything, including soccer, shinty and badminton and has degrees in law, accounting, history, english and about fifteen other things. His litany of self-praise was a bit overwhelming, and unfortunately, by the time we managed to extricate ourselves (when he paused briefly in explaining how he had redesigned their drainage system to be the best in the region by going to the loo), it was dark and we weren't able to fully enjoy our surroundings by having dinner on the front deck as we had planned. Ah well, it was a lovely meal nonetheless, and accompanied by a delicious Chardonnay.

The following day, we had our breakfast (yummy eggs florentine with wilted rocket, hollondaise and ciabatta bread!) on the balcony which was gorgeous. From there, we drove up to Picton to get the ferry back to Wellington. The crossing was lovely, with perfect weather and flat seas. We checked into the YHA, a lovely purpose built hostel in the middle of the city and then went off in search of lunch. It took a while, but we eventually got fed and so we went to the Embassy Theatre (the biggest screen in the southern hemisphere!) to see 'Sideways' which had been reccomended to us by all of the Americans on our wine tour. It was a good film, but I think I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't heard so much hype about it before hand. Afterwards, we spent ages looking for Orlando Bloom's seat (they showed the Return of the King premier there and have little plaques next to the seats that the stars sat in!), but couldn't find it so had to make do with Aragorns . Afterwards, we went back to a great restaurant we had gone to before for a slap up meal and then went back to the hostel for sleepage.

The following day we had a lazy morning around Wellington and then started the long drive up to the Tongariro National Park, also known as Mordor in a little known book that I think has been made into a film. We were planning on doing the Tongariro Crossing, renowned as New Zealand's greatest one day walk. Unfortunately the forecast was for fog, rain and limited visibility, and even more unfortunately, turned out to be correct for the first time ever! What followed was a bit of an ordeal as after the halfway point, the clouds just opened up and we were quickly soaked through to the skin. To make matters a bit worse, both my knees started to complain loudly of abuse and it was quite hard to walk down hill as I had to stop frequently to let the pain die down enough to continue! I think I really did some damage to myself in the city 2 surf 14k run last August!

We arrived back at the hostel, sodden and miserable but brightened up when we were told that they had a spa exactly for people like us! Wuh hoo! It was 41.5 degrees and worked wonders in warming us up! Afterwards we couldn't face cooking so we went to the pub next door for some yummy food and a couple of pints while we watched the rugby. We had an early night that night, as we had gotten up at 0615 to catch the bus to the start of the walk.

The following day, we went to the village of Whakapapa to go up Mount Ruapehu (when you next meet us, ask Susan to say it for you ), the largest active vulcano in New Zealand. It is a ski area during the winter, although we were horrified by the number of sheer cliffs that litter the 'ski fields' - and were unsurprised to find that they had absolutely no beginner slopes when we found a map of the ski slopes. We got two chairlifts quite high up the mountain - above the snow line in fact, and then did a somewhat gruelling walk up to the 'Skyline Ridge' where we had a view out at the surrounding country side (very Mordor like!) and the peaks of Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngaruahoe (which was Mount Doom in the films - with a little bit of digital enhancement). There were some spectacular views but it was very cold once we stopped moving so we didn't linger too long up there.

From there, we drove to Waitamo, for our last touristy stop on the New Zealand leg of the trip . After losing patience with the incompetent staff at the Kiwi Paka hostel (where they kept sending us to non-existent double rooms!), we moved to Juno Hall, which is a lovely wooden hostel nearby. There are 20 commercial cave trips in Waitamo and it is really hard to pick a trip to do as they all sound pretty much the same. Thankfully, the dutch girl behind the counter was very helpful and found reasons to discard all brochures except two - 'The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company' and 'Absolute Adventure caving'. Absolute Adventure was mostly about caving and didn't include tubing, so we went with the other company and were not disappointed! We got kitted up in wetsuits (with lovely fashionable white wellies!), helmets (with lights) and abseil harnesses and then drove out to the cave entrance - just a hole in the ground in a field. First we abseiled down 37 metres into the cave and then adventured ourselves around the place, climbing up through waterfalls, going on a flying fox to get through one tricky bit, swimming through freezing water, wriggling through really narrow crawl spaces, etc. It was great fun, and certainly one of the highlights of the trip.

After the trip, we zoomed up SH1 to Auckland (stopping at Hamilton for some coffee) to visit my aunt Rosemary. We took her out for dinner last night to a nearby Thai restaurant and had a really nice time with the assistance of a lovely South African Cab Sav/Merlot (she shares your fondness for Nederburg, Dad). It's great to catch up with far-flung family members as it's fascinating to hear opinions and memories about various other family members..................*GRIN*.......

It's really sad that this is the end of the kiwi leg of our trip as it has all been just so amazing. Last night we made some top 5 lists of our favourite parts of both New Zealand and Australia and mine were something like this:

Australia:
1. Driving a campervan the length of a continent from Darwin to Adelaide.
2. Climbing Ayers Rock.
3. Chilling out in Margaret River for a few days.
4. Litchfield National Park
5. Grampians National Park

New Zealand:
1. Diving the Poor Knights islands marine reserve
2. Fiordland National Park
3. Cape Reinga
4. Catlins
5. Marlborough Wine Region

That said, it's all been so amazing, that for New Zealand at least, I have trouble narrowing the list down to just 5. Ah well, the next stage of 'Plan See The World' is two weeks on a beach in Thailand, so I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself!

Hope everyone is froody,

Marty

We gave into temptation and stayed in Nelson on that rainy night a week ago - and a good thing too. There was so much rain that we were looking for Noah's number to ask him about building some arks. A couple of the roads we had been planning on travelling upon were closed and it wouldn't have been much fun to turn a corner to find that the road or bridge had been washed away!

Instead of spending the evening driving, we spent it doing Susan's favourite thing - eating. We found a nice Malaysian restaurant pretty quickly and I was assigned the task of finding a hostel. I was very lucky that the first hostel offered us a double room, and also said that they had a spa we could use!! There was much rejoicing and I zoomed down in our funky RAV and checked in, then went back to finish my meal. When we arrived in the hostel, the first thing we did was get into the outdoor spa in an attempt to return our legs to normal service. It was great, but it started to rain - icy bolts of freezing rain. Contrary to what you'd expect, it is not cosy to be sitting in a hot spa with refreshing rain on your face, so we beat a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the hostel.

The following day we had decided to try and save a day from our schedule by driving the 7.5 hour journey between Nelson and Fox glacier. This seemed like a fine plan but since we turned our noses up at the free breakfast offered by the hostel and went elsewhere, we didn't leave Nelson until well after midday, so were still driving through driving rain in the dark at 7:30pm. Eventually, I called a halt to the proceedings 60kms short of Fox glacier and we stopped in some small town called Matapora or something like that and got a room in the first motel we saw. It was a big relief to get into somewhere warm and cosy and settle into bed to watch quality New Zealand TV, which gets most of it's programs from the UK. Thus, a welcome relief from Australia's habit of getting American programming, complete with the 10 minute ad breaks.

The following day, we had planned to walk Fox glacier, as I had previously walked Franz Josef glacier. Unfortunately, it was closed for walking due to rockfalls and so we had to go to Franz Josef instead. The day was forecast to be miserable rain, but dawned nice and blue, so we set off with high hopes of a lovely walk! Sadly, the rain didn't stay away and within two hours, we were very very wet. Luckily, they had given us lots of Gore-tex gear so we were pretty well protected from the elements. The walk wasn't as good as the last time I did it, three years ago. One of the reasons for this was that last time the weather was perfect, but perhaps the main reason was that someone had died on the glacier a week previously. I think this meant that they had changed the route to avoid the more dangerous bits - no bridges, ice caves or crevices. For a look at what it was like last time, look here:

http://www.skynet.ie/~martin/pictures/020821nz/

We had had more unrealistic driving expectations to follow the glacier walk, by planning on driving south to Haast. By the time we stumbled off the glacier and back to the car, cold, wet and exhausted, we decided that was folly and instead booked into the closest motel for the night. Should I mention that we happened to pick a motel with a spa and went for a quick half hour dip to fix up our legs? I probably shouldn't!

The following morning, we drove on to Queenstown where we had various adrenalin activities planned. The drive is a lovely one, and we had to stop often to take pictures. At various times during the drive, doing bungy jumps was discussed and Susan was firmly against it! We checked into our hostel and went for a bit of a wander around Queenstown, which is a really nice village with an alpine, ski-resort feel to it. For such a touristy place, it doesn't really feel like it - it feels cosy and friendly. We went for an indian, as it is traditional - Oisin, Marie and I had gone for an indian in the same place when we had arrived three years ago! While there, we both had momentary lapses of reason and ordered our food with the chilli dial set to 'Hot' rather than our more normal 'medium'. Mistake. Big mistake. Taking one mouthful of food then drinking two glasses of water doesn't make for a very comfortable meal! Afterwards, we went for a couple of drinks and then went back to the hostel.

The following day, we missed out on the alleged free breakfast, so ate out again (ahem). After that, we got the gondola up the mountain to go luging again. It was great fun, as the track is WAY faster than the track in Rotorua. We ended up having 7 goes again as it is just addictive, and then we watched some people doing the Sky Swing (http://www.ajhackett.com/index.php?page=swing). The first cracks in Susan's adamance about not bungying appeared then, when she saw how easy it looked, even going so far as to enquire about prices! After that, we went for food in an Irish pub (hearty toasted sandwiches in front of a log fire - just the thing to warm your cockles) and I finally got Susan to agree to do a tandem bungy on Kawarau Bridge. Agreement in place, I rang them and tried to book a jump for that evening, but they were just about to close so the time was set for 10:15am the following morning.

We had another beer next to the fire and came up with a plan for the evening - to go to the Ice bar in Queenstown, then out for dinner to a pizza place that Lorraine had reccomended. The ice bar is a really cool place where the temperature is kept at about minus 7 celsius (http://www.minus5.co.nz/) and everything is made of ice - the glasses, the couches, sculptures, the bar, everything! You get given a big duffel coat and gloves to keep you warm and a vodka based cocktail included in the entrance price. It was a very cool (literally!) and different experience, and lots of photos were taken!

After that, we went to Winnies to warm up next to their log fire with a beer while we waited for a table. The food was great, although it was a little hard to flag down one of the hordes of wait staff for service! Afterwards, we went for a beer and then back to the hostel.

Sue apparently didn't get much sleep that night as in her head she was jumping of the bridge 50 different ways...but eventually the next day came and we set off for Kawarau bridge. We checked in, and my feet started to get a bit chilly, so I resolved to tell Susan we could think twice about it. However, when I came back from getting a coffee, she already had her credit card out and was paying for the jump, so I had to revert back to being all gung ho about it. Unfortunately, they told us we couldn't do a tandem jump because of the vast difference in our weights, so we decided to do two individual jumps instead.

Out onto the bridge we went, and there was a big queue for the 'fat bastard' ledge were people over 65kg jump (thicker bungy cord I think?), and no queue at all for the 'petite' queue, where people under 65kg jump. That meant that in no time flat, Susan was tied up to some bungy rope and being led to the edge. There was a bit of wailing, and a long pause while the Jumpmaster, Tim, slowly coaxed her into letting go of the various handrails. And then! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...GO. She tensed for the jump, but made the fatal mistake of looking down and froze with a wail instead. Much more coaxing ensued, with some good cop/bad cop stuff going on with the various people trying to talk her into the jump. Then...5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - GO! She tensed for the jump and may even have made a little hop towards the edge, but with another wail she proclaimed that it was impossible and she wasn't going to do it. I was next in the queue for the fat bastard ledge, so after some quick consultation we decided that I wouldn't jump either and we'd go get our $330 back to spend it on something else.

Ah well! At least she got up on the ledge and looked the jump in the eye! We had a coffee and then returned back to Queenstown for some breakfast before beginning the drive down to Te Anau, gateway to the Fiordland National Park. It was an uneventful drive and we booked into a Top 10 holiday park before going for a wander around the shops to figure out what we were going to do the following day. I bought Susan a book on chess (which came with a much better board then the one we were using) and we eventually decided on a cruise around Milford Sound and to do the first day of two of New Zealand's Great Walks - The Kepler track and the Routeburn track. From there, we went into our accomodation and had a few games of chess before an early night.

The following day, we were up and at 'em at 7am and on the road for 7:50 to drive up to Milford sound. It was a lovely drive through the Fiordland National Park, and we managed to overtake the couple of massive coaches in front of us quite quickly, allowing us to zoom along. That is, until we came up against Mr. AAS, the driver of a huge Britz camper van with registration AAS392 - this is emblazoned across my mind for reasons which will shortly become clear. He didn't have any regard for the queue of cars building up behind him, and continued to potter along at 70kph. When I finally had a stretch of open road in front of me, I indicated to over take and started to come up along side him when he veered three feet over the white line, reducing the amount of space available to me to about half the width of my RAV. I slammed on the brakes as there was a crash barrier on my right and a campervan getting closer and closer on my left and we screeched and skidded to a halt. I have no idea what was up with him, whether he was actually trying to kill us or whether he was just a total dickhead. In any case, it was a while before my heart rate got back to normal, I can tell you!

From there, we drove through the Homer Tunnel, which is a lovely little tunnel which was started back in the 30's by 5 men with a wheelbarrow. It shows the signs of it's origins, with rough stone walls and little streams running down through it! It's a one-way tunnel, like NZ's uncountable one-way bridges, with a 15 minute period on the traffic lights at both ends.

We eventually arrived safely into Milford Sound - there isn't much there, just a huge visitor centre where all the cruise companies have booking desks, and a cafe. We had a quick coffee and then got on the huge catamaran that was going to take us around the harbour. The temperature was around 10 degrees, but there were no clouds in the sky and it was a lovely day. The cruise was fantastic, with steeply rising cliffs on both sides and waterfalls cascading down and snow capped peaks all around. I had decided that we had to do the cruise which also visited the underwater observatory in the sound as it cost too much money to dive there, as I had originally planned. Also, I saw a picture of the dive boat and I didn't fancy spending 6 hours in a zodiac in 10 degrees with 40 knot winds and wearing a wet suit!

The reason that people dive the sound is that due to the unique conditions of it's location, there is a permanent layer of tannin stained freshwater floating on top of the saltwater in the fiord. This creates low light conditions lower down and allows deep water denizens to thrive in relatively shallow depths. It is one of the only places in the world where recreational divers (who have a maximum depth limit of 42m) can dive to see black coral - so called because when it dies it turns black, unlike most tropical coral which turns white - hence the term 'coral bleaching' to describe dead reef systems. The observatory was a great place, with an observation deck sitting at about 9m it's perfect for giving non-divers a glimpse at what 'the big deal is' . Black coral doesn't look particularly exciting as it looks almost exactly like a small shrub with white leaves. The visibility was about 9 meters, enough to make me wish for a moment that I had braved the elements to dive there...

After the cruise, we started the drive back to Te Anau, stopping at various waterfalls and other marvels to break the journey. We paid a visit to the Humboldt falls, which are part of the Milford Track (one of New Zealand's Great Walks), and then did a grueling 75 minute uphill hike to the Key Summit (which is the first day of the Routeburn Track) for a spectacular 360 view of the surrounding countryside. We stayed up there for a long time, just enjoying the view. In the distance, we could see the Routeburn track zig-zagging up a very prominent peak and congratulated ourselves once again on not undertaking it!

After that gorgeous walk, we drove back to Te Anau to find that we had our 3 bedroom house to ourselves so settled in for dinner and a game of chess. The following day, we were up late and headed to a place called 'Rainbow Reach' where we were going to do the first day of the Kepler Track to a place called the Moratau hut. It was another gorgeous walk through a moss-carpeted beech forest and ending up on the banks of Lake Manapouri, for a stunning view out of the lake and surrounding forests and mountains. The lake was very placid and in the photographs we took it is difficult to figure out whether the picture is upside down or not - the reflections are that perfect.

After returning to the car we started the next leg of the journey down to Invercargill, the southern most city in New Zealand. It was an uneventful drive, and we checked into our hostel with no difficulty. It was a YHA, and easily the nicest hostel we've stayed in on our whole holiday - excellent facilities, large, clean, spacious bedroom with en suite, etc. Susan cooked up a nice risotto and after that we headed out to 'Waxy O Neills' for a pint of Murphys.

In the morning, we did our usual trick of checking out then using the kitchen anyway to have breakfast - ahem! Fast broken, we decided to take the 'scenic' route to Dunedin, our next stop. It was supposed to take an extra two hours, but with spectacular views - and we weren't disappointed. Our first stop along the way was at Waipapa point where just after we parked, a mad swiss man reversed into us at high speed. Luckily, our RAV has rubber bumpers and there was no damage done! We got chatting with him as we headed down to the light house, and as we were standing there chatting, a local came up and told us that there were seals and sea lions on the beach below. We went down, and sure enough - there they were. Two New Zealand fur seals and the biggest sea lion I've ever seen in my life. He was HUGE, and barely deigned to open one eye to acknowledge our existence. He spent most of his time wriggling around making himself comfortable and then letting out big happy (but smelly! ew, fishy breath!) sighs.

Our next stop was at Slope Point, which is the southern most tip of the south island. It was quite amazing to stand there with the freezing wind blowing in your face and know that there is nothing between you and Antarctica. We had lunch there, and then continued on to Porpoise bay, so named due to the Hector's Dolphins which lived there. Apparently, they had had enough of humans and buggered off two years ago and haven't been seen since. Just next to Porpoise Bay was Curio Bay which has the petrified remains of a Jurassic era forest 160 million years old! If you use your imagination a bit you can see the petrified trees, but after the first one, it was hard to maintain any sense of awe, so I ran back to the car to escape the infernal thrice-damned sandflies.

We had one more stop on our way to Dunedin, at another set of waterfalls which were quite pleasant, but from there we made a bee line for Dunedin, which is where we are now! Along the way, our travel agent in Auckland rang to tell us that our standby flights had come through and that we have three extra days in New Zealand - hurray! All is not well however, as we've decided to move to Dublin instead of back to Sydney so Susan is going to go to Sydney early to pack up our stuff and send it on, while I stay behind and do some bonding with the rellies.

Hope everyone is well!

Marty