Travelling the South Island

A lots happened over the last few days so I'll try and give you a brief update. After arriving back in the South Island in Nelson I rented a car with two German girls - I think I was invited for virtue of experience driving on the left - and headed to Abel Tasman National Park. The park was pretty beautiful but we got less time than we would have wanted after leaving Nelson late and heading in the wrong direction. I was driving, not navigating.
Anyway, Abel Tasman was overshadowed by Golden Bay, where we went the following day, which had huge rolling hills, mountains and rocks, and as the name suggested massive pale gold beaches. We stayed in a rural hostel with a giant hammock, made from a fishing net, hung over a stream. It was fantastic.
Back in Nelson, I discovered the bed I had booked over the net was for March 27 instead of February 27 (d'oh!) and the town - which is stunning and popular with Kiwis as well as foreigners - was full. Fortunately the hostel owner took pity on me and gave me a tent to pitch up in the back garden.
Last night was Greymouth, which isn't so much the arse-end of the world as a pile on the arse-end. Even the name is dull. Fortunately that was only one night and we are now in Franz Joseph. They've got glaciers here, but it's raining so hard you can barely see your hand in front of your face, let alone ice peaks in the horizon. I'm kayaking tomorrow so hopefully the weather will improve.

The skydive

Well we finally did the skydive on Sunday, which was amazing and absolutely terrifying. It cost a bomb but was definitely worth it. Seven of us went up with our instructors and a few parachute-wearing cameramen in a tiny light aircraft. My instructor kept telling inappropriate gay jokes (inappropriate as he was strapped to my back at the time!) The first two jumpers got out at 12,000ft. Probably the scariest moment was seeing how fast they disappeared out of the plane, one second they were there, the next, well...
We went from 15,000ft and freefell for 10,000. That, I think, is three times the height of Snowdon. After a while it feels like you are flying rather than falling and when the parachute comes out it feels as though you just shot upwards and you imagine banging your head on the plane. The view was stunning. In fact New Zealand just keeps getting more beautiful. I'm about to go to Abel Tasman National Park with a couple of German girls and possibly a Swedish hitchhiker. Being on the tour most of my time is spent with tourists, which is a shame in a way, but still a good laugh. I haven't got a card reader at the moment so I'm not downloading photos, but will try to add some to this blog as proof for the sceptics!

Chief in black water

We left Aukland at 7.30am on Friday to start our mooch down the north island. Auckland is a big old characterless city. It holds over 1.4 million people and is New Zealand's biggest and most multicultural. It has a great museum with a very good Maori section but that's about all you can say for it.
I had no idea when I got off the bus that we would be stopping in Waitomo for three hours. That's the thing about these package deals, you just have to do what you're told, although most of it is good and Waitomo is a classic example. I had no idea when I woke up that morning that I would be floating down a mile of black water in caves with glow worms lighting up the roof like stars. About 20 of us put on black wet suits, white gum boots and red miners' helmets and trudged off over fields in the rain - we looked like a daft punk video gone wrong. It was great fun and the water was filthy!
Yesterday evening we went to a Maori village. I was chosen as one of five chiefs - I know, but candidates were in short supply. It was pretty difficult keeping a straight face as the Maoris did their challenge dances, I struggle not to grin in the most mundane situations and this was pretty ludicrous. However the Maoris didn't seem to mind as they selected me out of the chiefs to receive their present. OK it was only a silver fern, but I was pretty chuffed nontheless. I was supposed to go skydiving today but it was called off because of the weather (no, really) so hopefully I'll be able to do it tomorrow. Have a good time at work though, won't you.

New Zealand, sweet as

OK, I'm currently in Wellington, capital of New Zealand, and back to proper backpacking after working for a few weeks in Sydney. I flew into Christchurch and have a whistle-stop tour of both islands before flying onto South America next month.

Everyone raves about New Zealand, it's early days for me, but I'm not going to piss in your coffee and call it cappuccino. So far the weather's been pretty poor and Christchurch and Wellington aren't the most happening cities in the world. In between Kaikoura was beautiful and windswept, but I think some of the better places - not to mention sky-diving and bungee jumping - lie ahead.

It's expensive to travel here, even though the cost of living is fairly cheap, and I've wound up on a Magic Bus tour, which is as cheesy as it sounds - the driver says "sweet as" every sentence and has a CD collection better suited to torturing spies than entertaining tourists.

The above was written a couple of days ago and saved as a draft. The weather's improved and I'm currently in Mount Maunganui ( or something like that). The scenery is breathtaking. New Zealand reminds me of home, the weather is mixed, the people are really friendly but reserved like the Brits, rather than ebullient like the Aussies. Life's pretty good right now. I'm heading to the beach and will then climb a mountain in the early evening (it's not a big mountain).

Noosa, Fraser, surfing and falling

I'm in New Zealand now, but will blog on that over the next couple of days as I want to write about Noosa in Queensland first. I know I've not blogged frequently of late, and plan to change this.

I visited a few days ago. It was another travel-writing freebie, but the place is so expensive that I blew a day and a half's budget in a sushi restaurant. However, they can afford to charge crazy prices because it is a little paradise with sub-tropical rain forests, perfect beaches and reliably glorious sunshine, without the mad extremes of Victoria of late, or the flooding of further north.

I tried surfing a couple of times in Colloroy, where the hostel let us use surf boards for free with only our key cards as deposit.

However, I didn't take any lessons until Noosa. I got put straight into an advanced class as the instructor thought I looked like a surfer (honestly, he said that) and they wanted to even out the numbers. If I looked like a surfer on the beach, the likeness ended when I got in the ocean. I was able to stand up, but while my fellow students glided to shore, I almost immediately crashed headfirst into the water on every attempt. It was very frustrating.

Fraser Island is stunning. I expected it to be quite touristy as it is on everyone's itinerary, but being a National Heritage site it remains virtually untouched. As well as rainforests and fresh water lakes (which were welcome after the copious amounts of sea water I drank while failing miserably to surf), there are dingoes aplenty, one of which casually wondered past. I have also seen a kowala bear, but as they are nocturnal and it was daytime, it was just sleeping.

My PR host for the trip was a lesbian and a great laugh. We had plenty in common - drinking, sports, the waitress - and bizarrely is became something of lesbian-themed three days. Once you find one, loads turn up.

Australia and the daily grind

"I want to fly and run till it hurts.
Sleep for a while and speak no words in Australia." Manic Street Preachers, Australia.

There's a portly old guy who sits on the corner of my street, occasionally blasting notes out his wooden recorder (that's not a metaphor), and otherwise just mumbling to himself in a manner which might pass for singing in a world where all the walls are padded. Further up the street a guy sings and plays the guitar while balancing a skateboard, upright, on his forehead. Poor looney tunes can't compete with that, but I think he does it for the love of it, and if the buskings not going well at least it will be sometime before he starves to death.
The point of this... there's not a lot happening right now. We attended Chinese New Year at Darling Harbour on Sunday, there was a parade - but none of those twenty-people dragons that look giant centipedes - and fireworks. The Aussies love fireworks and, to be fair, they're damn good at them.
The job's going badly again. Partly because we've brought out a new offer that is no better than the one on TV, partly because my bosses are incompetent, and partly because the fitters don't want to climb roofs in the heat. (They are installing cable and satellite in Sydney in peak summer, did no-one foresee it might get a bit warm?) The important thing is that none of this is my fault, the only non-faulty link in the chain, and if you believe that...
So I will probably get into debt, but it's only money, c'est la vie. I head to Queensland on Thursday for some surfing and a trip to Fraser Island, and soon I will be heading on to New Zealand.