Yasawa Islands, Fiji

Bula! Pretty simple one this. I didn’t plan coming here when planning my trip, but as it was stop over I thought I’d poke my nose in. I had no intentions of doing a single damn thing as I was pretty activitied out after New Zealand. So got a ferry to a tiny little island with small resort on the beach. And that was it. I lied in the clouds (the sun didn’t really come out for the whole week), surrounded by women in bikinis (tough life).


No activities, no day trips, no real partying, just beach, book, food, booze, bed. It was a pretty old place though and the locals were very friendly. Quite similar to Thailand except a lot more expensive (15 pound an hour for internet anyone?)

I did successfully managed to wipe 14GB of music off my mp3 player whilst trying to fix it (I could dedicate an entire blog entry to repeatedly typing the word ‘shit’, but I wont bother). Looks like I now have no music to listen to at all now. Pig bollocks.

Anyway, after all the isolation I thought I’d spend one night on the ‘party island’ called Beachcomber. Maybe get in a bit of DJing. Turned out that the beach was far below par than the one id just been on, there were no DJ decks only Micheal Jackson and Black Eyed Peas on loop and the only real party to be had was by the mosquitoes who ravaged me in the night. But again, it was a nice time to hang out with girls in bikinis.

Thank you Fiji. You were tidy. Next up is the main event of the trip. Le pierce de morgan. The one Ive been waiting for. The United States of America. As they might say over there…..BRING IT THE HELL ON!!

Taupo, New Zealand

Yes, back here again. I missed out doing the great Tongariro crossing trek when I was first here as Id just done 2 days of snow boarding and I had a very tender rump. A 17km trek over a snow capped volcano wasn’t the most appealing at that time. So I came back. Well actually I went to Rotaroa again first, checked into a hostel, walked around a bit before realising that I had actually gone to the completely wrong town and I cant do the trek from here so I needed to travel down to Taupo quickly otherwise I wouldn’t have time to do it. SO, I get back to Taupo, check into another hostel and get a nights rest.

6am and Im off in a bus to the base of the mountain. I cleverly bought big, clunky, take up lots of room in your rucksack, hiking boots before I left the UK and I was pretty chuffed this was the second time I was gonna use them in my entire trip. They actually rape my feet each time as well so Im not the biggest fan of them. Anyway, the trip is split up into a few stages and it’s a little upsetting when it tells you the hike takes about 7 to 8 hours. That’s 7 to 8 hours of non stop walking up and down a volcano. But in actual fact its not that bad. The aptly named ‘Devils Staircase’ part of the mountain got me sweating and panting a fair bit but apart from that it was all fairly easy going. That’s probably because Im so incredibly fit and healthy.

"A normal photo. How strange"

At the top you get the satisfying views and also you can warm your arse up on the rocks when you sit down as it’s a great big volcano and has loads of steam coming out of the ground.

Its all very strange but you try not to think about the whole thing erupting right under your feet (as a neighbouring volcano did only 10 years ago). After that its all down hill. I was actually the first one I the group to finish it and managed to complete it in just over 5 and half hours, considerably less than the stated time. Probably because I did really stop as I was focused on getting it over with. I feel I needed to do it since I was here but I still haven’t made my mind up if Im the trekking type. Certainly a good time to clear your head and do a bit of thinking. But I’ve had plenty of time to do that. Also good adjusting to being on my own again since Ive had Andy with me since April. Mountain conquered, all that was left was to pop back to Auckland fly to Fiji. Which I did. Although I did manage to squeeze in a night of Karaoke with the lovely Kitty Kat from Perth.

And that was New Zealand. A place that is both extreme and beautiful. You could say it is ‘extremely beautiful’. Or not. I crammed as much as possible into a month and did a whole host of crazy shit that I'd never done before. If I had time to stay and linger in one place I could quite easily fall in love with this place. Top marks all round and a real highlight of the trip.

Ok I’ve got one week to get a tan in Fiji before the states.

Queenstown, New Zealand

Adrenaline valley. This where it all goes off. Partying, skiing and all sorts of other ‘extreme’ activities. The drive there was spectacular. Stopped off at this gorgeous lake.



The thing this picture doesn’t show is that there wasn’t a single sound to be heard once the car was stopped. I could have easily spent an afternoon there in utter peace, but I, er, didn’t. The scenery all the way there from Christchurch was non-stop stunning. The best of my entire trip so far. Also managed to nearly cause a fantastic crash. Leaning out the window whilst the car was moving to take a picture, my cap flew off. Having been rather attached to it for the last half a year or so I was desperate not to lose it so I screamed at Andy to stop the car which he willingly obliged. Unfortunately there were two cars behind and they were both trying to overtake at the same time. Was kinda expecting one to just smack straight in the back of us so we just shut our eyes and grimaced. Luckily they passed without accident. The important thing is though, I got my hat back.

Driving into the town we hook up with an old buddy from Perth (Jack) who has managed to sort out a place for us to crash. Also he’s a bit of a social whiz and knows pretty much everyone in town so we’re soon meeting a whole host of different people.

"A very dodgy character. Jack's alright though"

Queenstown is a major ski resort with lots of development going on so they can cram the tourists in for the ski season. Luckily the season was over as we arrived as the snow had melted so it wasn’t going to be full of the aforementioned twats.

To take things easy at first we did a bit of sight seeing. Milford Sound is a load of very steep islands that you can sail around and point at. Of course it was pissing down with rain when we picked our day to do it. This gave the unexpected advantage of being able to see loads of massive waterfalls off the side of the islands. Even got the chance to sail right up to them and stand under them and get soaked (which I did although I disagree with the captain in it being a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ – I get wet all the time).


"Thats quite an impressive gush you have there Mrs Winterbottom"

Fairly not-very-interesting stuff however we did meet this curious fella on the drive home. Called himself Smeegol and kept trying to grab my ring muttering about it being precious. Didn’t know what to make of him really!

"You're not touching my ring"


"Do you have to bare your ring like that?"

Back at the ranch, our time was spent mostly hanging out and reminiscing over the good times in Perth where the people were pretty, the beaches were flawless and the weather was scorching. However, for all these nostalgic good times, dark things loomed ahead. Mr ‘scared of heights’ here had booked a canyon swing and a bungee jump off the highest bungee in New Zealand (2nd highest in the world), Nevis (or as I kept calling it, Neville). This was the big one I was not looking forward to even before I left the UK. Something inside me told me I had to do it but by god I was not looking forward to it. The days ticked by just lounging round doing very little, but I knew I had to face up to it at some point. So I thought I would make one hell of a day of it. There was a big buzz going around DJ ‘Krafty Kuts’ playing in town on Tuesday and pretty much everyone in the town was going to what would be an awesome night. I thought I might as well make it an awesome day as well and booked in my Canyon Swing and Bungee for the same Tuesday. Now that’s what I call ‘extreme’. ‘Extreme Tuesday’ here we come!

The Canyon Swing is another stupid invention where you attach yourself to a rope and jump off a ledge and swing. Imagine a rope swing off a tree branch except its 100m high off a cliff and you travel at something ridiculous like 150kph. All this jumping off things and flying about got me thinking; who does this sort of thing!? Superman of course!!! And by a staggering piece of forward planning (rare I know) I had packed my fantastic Superman outfit from Sydney (remember that blog fans?). So it was that I found myself on a cliff edge, attached to a whole manner of clamps and ropes, cape flowing in the breeze and the icy wind blowing around my bare legs.


"Yeah! I can save the world!"

The drop is high. VERY high. In fact its stupid how high it is. I shouldn’t be standing this close to such a high and sheer drop. But hey, I got myself into this situation and there’s only one way out. YYAAAAAGGGHHHH!!


"I never knew Superman was ginger…"

There is something incredibly wrong with hurling yourself off a cliff. The instant you do it your body tells you that you have just done the stupidest thing in your life. And it reacts by flapping around trying to grab onto something that is quite clearly not there. Whimper. Its a sensation your body just cant cope with. So you plummet to the ground pretty certain that your numbers up. But then! Aha! You feel the rope catch you and you start to swing. Relief! Joy! This is actually fun. WHHHHHEEEEE!!!!


"Nnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyaaaaagggghhhhhhh!!!”

Then its actually disappointing. I want to swing back and forth for ages damn it! You only actually swing out once then they pull you back in and, gulp, back up. I made a point of just looking horizontally and not down for that bit as I don’t think I could cope being hoisted up 100m in the air just by a bit of wire.

"Get me back up!"

Phew! Glad that’s over with. That’s not it though. You’ve got the big one next. The Nevis Bungee. It was actually very wise of me to do the Canyon Swing first as it’s the perfect warm up for the bungee. So of you go again. Big old bus ride up a windy mountain to get kitted up in all sorts of rigging while others chuckle at your Mr Men pants. The trouble with this one is that you have to take a little lift thingy halfway across the 134m canyon to sit and wait in this flimsy tin shed suspended on 2 wires across the canyon. Oh, and its got a glass floor. This was deeply, deeply scary. I was quite quiet and shaking a little at the knees.

Once in the hut, you have lots of high adrenaline music to pump you up which I think is vital. You watch one by one as people hurl themselves off and get yanked back up again. You can see a list on the side and count down the people until its your go. Andy went before me and made it look rather easy with a quite magnificent dive out with his arms spread wide. Soon enough, its me. You sit in a chair quiet like a dentists chair while they attach the ankle harness. Now second only to heights, my next big fear is the dentist. So sitting in a dentist chair on the edge of a 134m drop is like some genius bespoke psychological torture for me. All they needed to do was put on ‘The Blair Witch’ project and I’d literally die from fear.

Luckily the Superman getup got me some supporting cheers from the other people in the hut which helped me enormously to play up to it all and dismiss it as nothing. And it kinda worked. I shuffled to the edge, only looking down to get my feet placing, looked to the horizon and stretched my arms out to do a ‘to infinitfy….and beyond!’ then leapt out (although strictly speaking that’s Buzz Lightyear but whos caring).





Again the initial sensation of doing something terribly stupid overcomes you, but this time, after the initial arm flailing, I managed to adopt a proper Superman pose with one arm forward and one arm at my side as I hurtled to the ground. And you know what. It was actually alright. I had no fear of hitting the ground I just casually waited for the bungee to kick in and slow me down, which it did after 8 seconds of freefall. As it extends you feel your eyes begin to pop out then your bouncing around up and down all over the place.

Then comes the important bit.

As you’re now dangling head first above a gorge, you need to pull a strap at your leg so that you get swung into a sitting position. You don’t have to do this but if you don’t manage to then you get pulled back up again as you went down, dangling from your feet head first. This was something I wanted to avoid at all costs. The panic set in when trying to pull my strap my cape got in my face and I couldn’t see a thing. Flapping about like a twat I luckily manage to pull the strap and Im soon being hoisted to the top, again making it imperative that I remain focused on the horizon and don’t look down.

Back in the hut and Im hyped up and relieved. Its over! I did it! I don’t have to do any more stupid things ever again in my life. I can lead a normal life again. Thank you. The ride back across the canyon in the little lift freaked me out again but once I was firmly back on solid ground I was immensely relaxed and celebrated with a sandwich and a fag. What can I say. Do it if your stupid enough. Its genuinely scary building up to it but the actual doing it and the relief after it is all rather pleasant. But I can now literally say been there, done that, got the T-shirt (because they actually give you a tshirt as part of the package).

Ok so back at the ranch, (it’s still ‘Extreme Tuesday’ don’t forget) a quick chill out then prepare with some drinking and then out for a bit of a rave massive. We hit the club at about midnight and its pretty rammed and sweaty and the music is pumping. To keep us going we take some legal over the counter ‘party pills’. Basically amphetamines.

The story goes that a Kiwi raver was rather bummed out at the sight of his mate disemboweling himself with a samurai sword at a party whilst off his nut on crystal meth, so he decided to make a safer, legal drug for people to take. And lo, party pills were introduced with the close watch of the government. They are commonly available in shops and off licenses. It gives the effect of drinking a hell of a lot of red bull. So basically you’re up well into the morning and generally feel as sick as a dog. Had a great night dancing my arse off but you really don’t do yourself any favours regarding the state you get in:

"Hmmm, Abba really have let themselves go these days..."

Ahem, yes, well. Ended up going to bed at 11am on Wednesday morning. Didn’t get out of bed until 9am on Thursday. ‘Extreme Tuesday’ indeed.

When will all these extremities end? One more thing to do. And that’s some ‘exteme’ Horse Trekking. Err, yeah. Yet again it sodding well pissed down so our ‘Ride of the Rings’ tour of all locations used in the films was a thoroughly damp affair. All very enjoyable and my horse ‘Presley’ behaved itself well enough although I may as well have let go of the reins as it did whatever it wanted to. I started off patting and whispering to him nicely trying to form a nice bond with the beast. By the end it was more ‘Cmon you bastard don’t give me any more jip!’. To top it all off when I finally dismounted, the fucker trod on my foot. No breakages thank god but it still hurt like buggery.

'The Lord of all Horses'

Queenstown almost done and a great way to top it off was DJing in a bar in town. Didn’t think it would amount to much but got a bloody good turn out and had the crowd jumping again. Lots of high fives and compliments. Hmmm, I really should take this up more seriously when I get home.

So its here I say goodbye to Jack and Andy. Farewell guys. In actual fact I have been with Andy EVERY single day since the end of March so its gonna be kinda sad leaving him behind as he’s been like a veruca to me and a fantastic travel buddy to boot. He said he didn’t want a big write up so I’ll just say that he’s shit at chess. I will see you both at the reunion I guess. Take care and big love guys.

'A mighty fellowship of ring-bearers'

Right, I’ve got one more mission to accomplish before leaving this almighty country…

Christchruch, New Zealand

Can’t really recall doing anything sexy here. There was some random ‘art’ project going on in the streets one night involving laser projection and SMS messages. So managed to get the word “Sparm” in massive letters on the side of a builing. Ace.


'I've always wanted my name in big letters'

I also displayed the witticism “I hate predictive text. Last night my girlfriend thought I wanted to kick her puppy and duck her aunt”. Ho ho ho. Weather was shit again. Lets hop it to the main event is it?

Greymouth, New Zealand

A long scenic route around the North West tip of the island ended us in the little town of Greymouth. Now this place was scary. Apart from the fantastic sunset we caught, and the quite mean looking waves that Andy didn’t surf, there was something not quite right about this place.

'A mesmorising gaze....'

There was no humans here. Checked into the hostel and there was only really a few old boys plodding around. Keeping to the strict, self-imposed rule that whilst in New Zealand we have to drink alcohol every day (I felt that I had not done myself a good enough service in the last few weeks of oz so I thought a retribution was in order), we decided to hit the town. Except, er, there was NO ONE around. Literally we walked down the middle of the road and there was nothing. No noise. Incredibly eerie. The pub we found was just closed and they informed us that the only bar open was the one in our hostel. Went back to the hostel, defeated, for some beers instead and got offered a fish by one of the patrons. “I’m, er, good for fish thanks”. Watched ‘Napolean Dynamite’ again as they were showing it in the bar. Found out I was wearing exactly the same watch as the dweeby protagonist. Idiot!

Picton, New Zealand

An uneventful ferry crossing that was billed as the most ‘beautiful ferry ride in the world’. Bloody raining wasn’t it so couldn’t really see anything. Im finding that the New Zealand weather is highly temperamental and is pissing on my fire quiet a few times in terms of being able to soak up the views. Never mind. It was at the ferry town of Picton where we bedded down for the night and got chatting to an elderly woman in the hostel.

Don’t really want to cuss her here as she was very friendly and nice but she did go on a bit and she was going off on spiritual meanings of things and destiny which I wanted to believe but it was a little too much in the clouds even for me.

She believed it was destiny that we gave her a lift to Nelson the following morning. Maybe it was but I think I’m gonna leave it at that. She might be a witch and turn me into a duck or something if I say bad things. Still she said she’s writing a book and that Andy and I would be in it. Aha! Maybe it was destiny that she would appear in my blog too! Oh the weirdness of it all. Or not. Oh this is just shit lets move on.

Wellington, New Zealand

'NnRRhhuuurrg! Too much acid!'

Ah, home to Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson. For me its just a stopping before making a ferry crossing to the South Island. I must say at this point, and I cant forget to point this out, that the Zealand sceney is absolutely bloody stunning. Anywhere you drive you have these amazing, weird-shaped, lush rolling hills going on forever. You will also never go anywhere with so much cattle in your life. Lets just say if the animals revolted ‘Animal Farm’ style, this country would be doomed. There are an incredible amount of different rock formations and landscapes due to its volcanic history. If Australia is a haven for biologist for all its crazy wildlife, then New Zealand is certainly a Geologists wet dream. I just think its pretty an’ tha’. Heres a few boring landscapey photos to highlight my glistening point:



'Frodo drove along this road did you know...'

Where was I? Oh yes Wellington. Well this is the place they had the big hoo-har for the premier of Lord of the Rings (well most of the studios and filming was done here). But bollocks to all that….It’s home to the only Welsh bar in the Southern Hemisphere!! That’s right! Eat your trousers excitement time. To be honest that’s the main reason Im here. After a conversation with a Canadian bird back in Taupo about why there is an Irish pub in every city in the world but not one Canadian or Welsh bar, she pointed out there was one here in Wellington. Upon seeing it, I did think it looked remarkably like a public toilet. Surprise, surprise that’s what it used to be before coming a gay bar. Then a Welsh bar. Nice when a bar has such a glamorous history. And the great thing is they only employ Welsh people to work there. So I felt quite at home in the Dragon Bar and got quite a friendly welcome. Strangely it was also where we met ‘Terry’ the highly annoying yet strangely amusing transvestite Maori. Got suitably chogged up and made sure I signed the guest book and the big Welsh flag they had there. Forgot to bring me bloody camera though! Drat.

The streets of Wellington have more buskers than any other city Ive visted. My particular favourite was this mad old hatter juggling. Unfortunately this photo doesnt highlight the fact that while he was a juggling he had a permanent, visible errection:

'Can I show you my balls?'

Nothing else to report except that I watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ at the cinema and thought Id use this opportunity to implore everyone reading this to go out and see it right now. A very important and scary documentary. We’re all doomed! Now. Where did I park the hummer?

Ohakune, New Zealand

To go skiing or snowboarding usually takes a fair bit of organizing in terms of picking a destination and sorting out all your gear and lift passes and what not. So I was very surprised that we managed to, with no prior knowledge or research, mooch around (drive actually) some mountains, find one with snow on it and go snow boarding. It was all so pleasantly easy. Rocked up to a little ski town, checked into a hostel, hired all the shit in the shop next door then just drove up the mountain and hit the snow.

'Do not attempt this at home. We're professionals'

Did I mention I’ve never snowboarded ever? Alright I have skied a fair bit but snowboarding is a different beast. Angie was in the same boat as me. Shall we get lessons? Nah sod it lets just figure it out ourselves. I’m gonna bloody break something here aren’t I?

After a frustrating start, we managed to get something resembling turning and stopping after an hour or two on the baby slope. Even got the confidence to try the pole lift (the one where you put the thing between your legs). Disaster of course and as I’m on my back still grabbing the pole for dear life hoping it drags me up the slope I hear “LET GO OF THE SKI LIFT!” from the lift attendant. It’ll be alright, the big slopes are all chairlifts, I can do them. So the next day, after a few hours of practice snow boarding from the previous day, Im hurling myself down a very steep blue run. Naturally I spend most of my time on my arse and it gets all frustrating and scary. But with these things, it’s all about confidence and just going for it.

It can be very frustrating, but like learning anything new you’ve got to keep at it to make sense of it. So I kept at it and very nearly got the hang of it. By the end of the last run I had simply ran out of energy and could barely turn so had to spend most of my last run on my arse.

The trouble with ski resorts for me is, I always get this uneasy feeling that every single other person on the slope is a pretentious twat. I don’t know what it is, maybe its just a deep rooted feeling of not fitting in with the whole “boarding” or “skiing” thing but I just feel its all a big mix of people I have nothing in common with. This is almost definitely all in my head as I have lots of friends who go boarding and skiing and luckily it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of skiing on snowboarding too much (unless anyone gets close to me).

Enough of my psychiatric problems. Overall snowboarding is not bad and I can see myself enjoying it more if I had a bigger, longer course with better snow and less 4 year olds on school holidays cutting me up and showing me how they’re 100 times better than me even though they've only just being born.

'Note there are no photos of me actually riding'