Kev & Rosy

Unique New York

2009-12-25T07:21:00.000-08:00

Stay classy planet Earth!

2009-12-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

The plane ride to New York was painless enough and our arrival was similarly easy. As soon as you arrive at JFK airport, there is a conveniently placed travel desk which books you straight on a shuttle bus to your hotel. Once we'd battled through the New York traffic, we arrived at Hotel 31 in Downtown NYC. We were starving by now and it was absolutely freezing so we didn't venture far that night. We just popped to a great little Italian restaurant on the corner of our street which was full to the brim with real New Yorker types. We liked New York so far and it was nice for me to think that, as Kev said over dinner, this was the last unfamiliar place we would be going to on this trip.

The next day, T minus 2, we ventured out into the cold towards Times Square. Times Square is just bonkers, like a poor man's Tokyo but with much more annoying people everywhere! The crowds were doing my head in and it was beginning to snow pretty heavily so we found ourselves a local Irish bar and went in to try and thaw out and get some feeling back in my toes – yes, at the time Kev reminded me of my quote in Kuala Lumpur when I vowed to never complain about the cold again, but I still did complain!

A beer each and ten chicken wings later and it was time to tackle the heavily falling snow again. We walked all the way through Central Park, past the ice rink, past the horse and carts and past the tourists and locals who were also braving the weather that day, right through to the Metropolitan Museum. We went into the foyer, but didn't bother paying to go inside. Instead, we wandered on a little to the Guggenheim Museum of modern art and co-incidentally, there was a Kandinsky exhibition on at the time. Kandinsky is Kev's favourite artists, so obviously, we had to go on in. The inside of the museum is like a huge peeled orange and it made me a little giddy walking up the continuous spherical slope, but it was an awesome place and Kev enjoyed the artwork.

By this time we were a long way from our hotel and the snow was even heavier now, but still we wanted to walk back rather than take a cab. We walked all the way to another Irish bar, about ten blocks from our hotel and decided we had to go inside because by now my Converse trainers and the four pairs of socks I had on beneath them were soaked through and my feet were about to fall off. It was a nice pub and the barman must not have been a genuine New Yorker because he was really friendly!

But we didn't stay in the pub long, just long enough to recharge our internal heating systems and then we went back out there to walk the ten blocks to the hotel. At the hotel, I quickly changed my outfit and we went straight back out to experience a Saturday night in New York City and to see what all the fuss is about! We made it along to an area called Murphy's Hill, which as you can imagine from the name, is full of Irish Pubs, but we like Irish pubs, you know where you are with an Irish Pub!

We ended up spending the entire evening in various pubs, having many drinks and having a very merry Christmas time. In the last pub we met some great guys from Minnesota. One of them, a girl, had just come back from Iraq and she showed me here photos on her phone and told me stories which fascinated me for hours (well, not hours, but a good ten minutes anyway, I've never met anyone who's been to war before!). They were a great bunch who told us that they enjoyed spending their free time deer hunting. I didn't tell them that I thought deer hunting was gross, but when Kev told one of the guys that he had never ever shot a gun, he erupted in amazement and summoned all his mates around to tell them all that 'can you believe this, this guy has never shot a gun'....'never shot a gun!?!' they replied in harmony, it was amusing to say the least.

We left the pub to find a foot of lovely white, clean snow on the ground. That night New York got dumped on by half of it's annual snow allowance for the year, it was chaos everywhere! But me and Kev enjoyed the walk home, rugby tackling each other to the soft, cushioned ground and laughing a lot. We had celebrated our last Saturday night of the trip in style and we were merry!

The next morning however, we were feeling a little rough, but there was no time to waste by lying in bed with a hangover. This was our last full day of the trip and we had much more exploring to do. The guys in the pub last night had given us their sightseeing bus tickets which were still valid for a couple of hours, so we hurried out and literally walked through the snow (they're not very good at cleaning up the snow in NY – unsurprisingly I suppose, when you consider it costs them £1m per inch and they'd had a massive 12 inches over night) to the bus stop, just by the awesome Flat Iron Building.

We caught the bus right down to the Statton Island Ferry pier, through the Greenwich Village, Chinatown and the Financial District. The bus tour was really good actually and if we were to go back we would definitely do the whole thing. The Statton Island Ferry would have taken us over an hour and we only wanted to do it for the views of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. The people waiting at the pier were pretty grimey and we decided that we couldn't face the trip with a hangover, so we saved that for next time! Instead, we wandered through Battery Park (past all the memorials for September 11th ) and to the water edge where we got perfectly acceptable views of the statue.

From there we walked back through the Financial District, past Ground Zero (which we didn't hang around by) and down Wall Street and the Woolworth's Building which is awesome, in fact, a lot of the buildings around there are awesome when you look up. Although me and Kev were amazed at how un-tall the buildings there are, I think perhaps compared to Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur they didn't seem too big. From there we went right on back through Chinatown which, despite the name, seemed to be only full of West African men selling dodgy knock off goods! It was horrible around there and the crowds of people trying to get tatty handbags that would probably fall apart by the time they got home was unbelievable! We moved on to Little Italy, which was much nicer, full of little bars and boutiques. From there it was into the East Village, which again seemed really nice, and from there, back to Murphy's Hill for a quick stop off in one of the familiar Irish Pubs.

That evening we celebrated our last night NOT in the real world, by going for dinner in the lovely Italian near the hotel. It was a night of mixed emotions. I was so excited to come home, but sad that the trip that had pretty much taken over the whole of 2009 for us, was just about over.

On our last morning, I woke up early. Kev had a long lie in to savour one of the few opportunities he would have in a while to sleep late. Once he had risen, we went out to Macy's, which was a big mistake. I don't know why anyone would chose to go shopping in New York at Christmas time – it's crazy there! There's too many people and Macy's is impossible to find your way around, so we didn't shop for long. Instead, we did what I love best, and went for some food!

With our full tummy's we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and then walked 11 blocks to Grand Central station, which was pretty impressive. We got on the bus to the airport and waved goodbye to our final destination. I was preparing myself for something to go wrong with our flight home. Throughout the trip we had experienced no delays, nothing stolen, nothing bad at all really and I was just waiting for something to go wrong! How pessimistic of me!

We went to the check in desk, but the guy behind the counter looked confused. I began to worry, we hadn't been able to check in on-line and now I started to worry whether Trailfinders had booked a flight home at all. After about 5 minutes of his confused face and my increasing heart rate, he told me I needed to go to the ticketing desk to get my e-ticket. I didn't know what that meant, but I left Kev with the bags and went to queue in the slowest line ever at the ticketing desk. As I stood in the queue, my nerves were racking, I was nearer to home than I had ever been, yet I was still so far away! I overheard a lady at the counter asking for a ticket (who knows where to, but in my head it had to be that she was wanting a ticket for the 7.40pm to London Heathrow, surely) and the man replied that he couldn't sell her a ticket because all the flights were full – this type of talk did nothing to calm my innards! But I was fretting in vain, as I got to the counter and within seconds, the lovely saviour behind the desk wrote down two e-ticket numbers and told me not to worry, there was no charge (NO CHARGE, I should blinking well think not!).

We checked in and handed over our bags before joining the queue to security. While standing in the queue I watched News 24 and began to panic again when I saw 'travel chaos expected as severe storm forms over the Atlantic'! ......'Uh, Kevin, we're not flying over the Atlantic, are we?'

Silly question, I know, but I just wanted to be sure. Kevin just looked at me and didn't say a word. Then I saw a flash on the TV screen saying 'travel disruption on America's East coast'. Phew, I thought, and for a split second I tricked myself into thinking we were on the West. But no, we were the East coast and then the final news flash ...'delays and cancellations expected at American airports JFK......etc'. Now there was no tricking myself, I was standing in a queue at JFK airport and there was a storm gathering over the water that I needed to fly on. By this point, I was convinced that my long awaited trip home was to be scuppered by nature, dam that nature thing.

But again, my pessimism was uncalled for and while the 7pm flight to Heathrow got delayed, by some stroke of luck, our 7.40pm flight pretty much boarded on time. Secretly, I was thinking, well still nothing bad has happened, surely we're just going to crash into the sea! (of course I didn't say this to Kev, I knew the turbulence that was inevitable on this flight was going to be bad enough for him to cope with, so I kept my morbid thoughts to myself...until now).

But despite all my negativity, we touched down on British soil just an hour late, after a pretty smooth journey and an awesome selection of films on demand. Surely my bag must have been lost in transit, I was now thinking, but no...there it was on the carousel. Everything had worked out fine and there was my Mum and Dad eagerly waiting for me at the entrance.

I though we might have left all the extreme weather conditions in every other country around the world, but it seemed that Britain was experiencing it's own crazy weather. The icy roads slowed us right down and then, for the first time in my life I think, both bridges into Wales were closed. Consequently, the journey to Newport took a million hours, but we finally made it to the land of my birth (well not actually, but it's a line from my school song) by the afternoon.

It's crazy how quickly everything became normal and it already feels like we've never even been away. We'll be heading back up to Scotland after Christmas, we'll be moving into our new flat, and we'll be starting back at work and everything really will be back to normal. I think the weirdest thing to get used to though will be not spending 24 hours a day with Kev. Amazingly, despite spending pretty much every minute with each other for the last four months, we've managed to get on pretty well!

So now that it's all over, I had wanted to sign off with my own line....'You stay classy.....Planet Earth', but Kev insists that that line is cheesorama and he chose a different sign off. Strangely enough, while I'm writing this blog we're watching the film that Kev's choice of sign off comes from so it seems fateful and strangely appropriate to go with Kev's version...and besides, I've kind of hogged this blog for 4 months, so it's only fair that I let him get the last word (it's the only time he'll ever get to do that while I'm around!). So, enjoy the last few photos and thank you all so much for reading the blog, I hope you've enjoyed the whole thing as much as we've enjoyed circumnavigating the globe. And now there's only one thing left to say....so, if I don't see you...good afternoon, good evening and..........goodnight!

Alcatraz & San Fran Bay

2009-12-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

I left my heart in San Francisco...

2009-12-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

When we first got to the Travelodge in San Francisco, everything seemed fine. The room was nice and there were partying Santa's everywhere we looked – we couldn't understand why the motel was so cheap, but we would soon learn! That night was the Santacon, which is an event that started many years ago in San Fran and has since spread to major cities around the world. It's basically a night where everyone dresses up as Father Christmas and goes out on a huge pub crawl about town. Having seen everyone having so much fun, me and Kev decided that we should go out too. We quickly got ready and headed out looking for the Lucky 13 pub that we had noticed on-line.

We left the hotel and turned right instead of left and walked for an eternity. The further we looked, the more dodgy the streets seemed to become. We decided we should head back and try the other direction. So we battled our way through the millions of drunken Santas and through the hundreds or homeless zombies that take over the streets of San Fran, and we made it to the Lucky 13 bar.

While me and Kev had left the UK thinking that American's can't handle their drink, this preconception was gradually being eroded during our time in the States. The Lucky 13 bar did nothing but dispel our belief even further – we now stand by the conviction that American's can drink....like fish! After ordering one JD and Coke and being handed a glass of barely drinkable neat alcohol, I chose to order another Jack Daniels, but this time in a long glass. In Rosy world, ordering a spirit in a long glass, means ordering 25ml measure of alcohol but in a glass with a lot of Coke. In America, this simply means pouring a long glass full of JD and then adding a splash of Coke – but charging the same amount of money for it as the small glass! In Kev's eyes, this was the best thing ever, but for me, this resulted in a very sore head in the morning!

And it was on that morning that Kev forced me to embrace the day and get out of bed to go for a wander. I'll be honest, that day I really didn't feel like going anywhere, but Kev tempted me out of the motel by promising to buy me breakfast (considering we were using a joint money account, that was a school-boy error on my part, but it got me out of my pit nevertheless!).

We walked up towards the area of Haight and found a popular looking breakfast diner, frequented by many many super gays. As Kev gobbled down his eggs, I sipped my lemonade and tried hard to stomach anything at all, while sound of the gays filled the room. I could have sat there all day listening to the campness and loving it, but Kev was on a mission to explore the city that day. We wandered off and soon stumbled on a neighbourhood that we instantly knew wasn't very friendly. It's strange how you can literally cross one road and find yourself in a terrible area and then walk on a block and cross the road again and be instantly in the safety of a good neighbourhood. So in this bad bad area, there were loads of bums hanging around on every corner and a few crazies and homeless people thrown into the mix. We picked up the pace and got the hell out of there and later looked the streets up on the internet. We found out that we had stumbled across an area called Tenderloin....one of the worst neighbourhoods in San Francisco!

Once we had escaped Tenderloin, we walked down towards Union Square, but when we got there it was so busy with tourists and homeless people that we instantly wanted to leave. We walked back along Market Street to our motel and were stunned by the number of homeless men and women everywhere – I'm honestly not exaggerating when I say that the homeless double the population in this area. Again, checked this out on the internet when we got back to the motel and realised that Market Street and Union Square is the main hub of the homeless in San Fran. So this answered our question of why our motel was so cheap – we were staying in the worst part of town!

Once we were back at the motel, I refused to leave again and we spent the evening watching TV! I think Kev nearly went mad with boredom, but there was no way I was going back out there with the scary people. Despite getting a really early night, we didn't get the best night's sleep as on this Saturday night, the streets were loud with drunken revellers and at around 2pm some bum went around knocking on everyone's door, probably asking for money. When we heard the knock at the door, we both sat up bolt upright in bed and looked at each other, unsure what to do...should we open the door, shout through door or phone reception – oh no, we couldn't phone reception...I'd spilt water all over the phone the night before when trying to pour myself a glass full, which had totally killed it...well done me and good job we didn't need it as a lifeline that night! Thankfully, it took us so long to do anything at all that the bum moved on and went to the next door, but once a strange person has tapped your door in the middle of the night, it's pretty hard to go back to sleep. The intrusion makes you immediately aware that while staying in a motel, the only thing separating you from the dodgy outside world is a small bit of glass or a flimsy plywood door. Thankfully, that was the last night we would spend in a motel!

The next morning we got up early and packed up our bags before getting as far away from Downtown San Francisco as possible. We drove up the roller-coaster type hills to the San Remo hotel in North Beach, San Fran. And what a difference! The San Remo is a lovely, traditional Victorian hotel, which is decorated in a quaint little style my Mum and Kev's mum would totally love it. As soon as we saw our room, I said to Kev 'This hotel is bound to be haunted'! But to be honest, for once this didn't bother me – as my Mum had always said 'it's the people who are alive you want to be scared of, not the ones who are dead!' and having spent the last two nights in Downtown, I was inclined to believe her and take my chances with the spirits.

We checked in and got back in the hire car for our final drive to the rental store, where we were met by the friendliest New Yorker we had ever (and would ever) meet, not that that's hard! He took our hire car away and after spending more than 3300 miles in that vehicle, it was time to say goodbye. Thankfully, Kev didn't take the loss of this car as badly as he had taken the end of his time in Rehab. He hadn't enjoyed the driving in America at all, it's either too busy or too quiet, nothing in between!

From the rental store we walked back to Union Square, but only to the nice bit where the posh shops are and the nice rich people! From there we wandered back to the hotel via that crooked street that you see on all the films, you know, the windiest hill in the world. That afternoon we went along to the waterfront at Fisherman's Wharf and decided to check out San Francisco's Hard Rock Cafe, to see whether it was as good as the one in Vegas. Admittedly, it did have a lot to live up to, but unfortunately, it didn't quite make the grade, but it was OK.

We stayed there for far too long and spent far too much money and then headed off to get some sushi for dinner. We found a great sushi bar just by the hotel and then went for another wander along the main road in North Beach, Columbus Avenue to sample the bars along there. There was a great little cafe/bar where we interrupted a Christmas party and met a beautiful little Boston Terrier called Shuh Shuh. From there, we moved on to the nearest Irish Bar, and then to a lovely local place called Sweeties just by the San Remo, before going back to the haunted hotel for the night. Strangely enough, that evening, we were sat in the hallway getting Wi Fi on the computer when we saw the owner of the hotel showing a young guy around. As he walked towards our hall way we heard him say...'this is the corridor that they call the haunted corridor' – great, I thought, my suspicions had been clarified. The owner proceeded to tell me that people who sleep in those rooms report seeing a blue light in their sleep. Luckily, I was so tired that night that I fell straight asleep and no blue lights could have woken me even if they'd tried!

The next morning we walked down to Fisherman's Wharf again to get on one of the famous San Fran trams. The trams are actually cable cars and they're the original ones so it was great fun to ride up and down the hills on it. We took the cable car to Union Square for a quick wander around before taking the tram back up over a different hill to Fisherman's Wharf again. We looked around Pier 39, which was basically just tourist shops, but was nice and then it would have been rude not to have popped back into Hard Rock as we were so close by!

That evening we went back to Sweeties bar just round the corner from the hotel and there we met the best Boston Terrier I've ever encountered. It's great in San Fran because everyone has Boston Terriers and they're awesome. Before we left for this trip we had always wanted to get a Pug, but had been concerned about the vets bills as they're notorious for having breathing difficulties. Boston Terriers are just like pugs, but cuter, friendlier and don't have the breathing issues – ideal, I can't wait to have one!

As well as Lola the Boston Terrier, that night we also met some guys from an organisation called Plastiki. These guys were British but had been in San Fran for a couple of years while they built a ship made of plastic bottles. They were planning on sailing to South America in the name of charity on this ship. Unfortunately, they've already been snapped up by the Discovery Channel so my attempts to get them for Matchlight failed, but keep an eye out for them in the news in future!

The next morning we had to wake up earlier than we'd woken for ages as today was the day we were getting thrown behind bars! Typically, this was the only day of bad weather we had the whole time we were in San Fran, it was raining and foggy and when we got to the pier we couldn't see the rock that we were about to head to. We boarded our ferry to Alcatraz and froze the whole way there (it's only a ten minute journey, over a mile and a quarter, to the prison, but still it was really cold!!).

Alcatraz was awesome, although much smaller than we had expected. The audio tour that you get given is totally worth it and as you wander around, the genuine prison guards and ex-cons talk you through the cells, the guard's quarters and the escape stories. First thing in the morning is totally the time to go as well, it was pretty quiet and it gives you a chance to feel the eeriness of the place.

We spent most of the morning at Alcatraz, but the weather was pretty grim and so we didn't wander around to appreciate all the flora and fauna that the rock has to offer. Once we'd seen the dank and dirty prison cells we'd seen enough! We hopped back on the boat and back to the bustling shoreline of San Francisco, the same shore line that all those prisoners looked out to while they were cooped up in Alcatraz.

That afternoon we had a lazy afternoon of watching films in the hotel while it poured with rain outside. An evening of sushi and an early night ended that day – we needed to get all the sleep we could that night, it would be a while before we would get to bed again!

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel and stored our luggage in their office. Then we just had ten hours to kill before we could get our shuttle bus to the airport. We chose to spend those ten hours getting a lovely breakfast in Little Italy and then wandering up to the Coit Tower, admiring the view of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge while we were there. The weather was beautiful that day thankfully. We then took a walk up and down the ridiculous hills of San Fran, along to the Ferry Building, and around the media area and along to a great little pub called Grumpies, which played an endless selection of the Deftones. From there it was back to Little Italy, which is a lovely part of San Francisco and then back along for our final night in Sweeties.

Typically, this was the best night in Sweeties and during a pool competition, Kev met Vinnie who was a fireman in San Fran who lived on a boat down at the pier. Vinnie introduced us to Cleveland (that wasn't his real name, but a little nickname I liked to use) and a whole load of other locals from the area. We had a great time chatting to them and finding out more about the city that they, and everyone else, seems to love so much. But alas, at nine pm it was time to go and pick up our bags and get our shuttle bus to the airport.

The bus picked us up from the San Remo and drove us out of town, picking up speed and refusing to stop at red lights as it ventured through Downtown in the dark! We had arrived at the airport by about half ten and we couldn't check in until 4am. So the only thing to do, was what everyone else who was saving money on a hotel that night did...sleep in the Subway restaurant! We bought ourselves a foot long, made ourselves comfy and settled down to get a few hours sleep.

At four I roused the reluctant Kevin and we went down to check in before going through to the gate to wait for our flight to New York City....our final destination.

Bigfoot Country

2009-12-13T19:32:00.001-08:00

Sacramento

2009-12-13T19:21:00.000-08:00

Land of the giants

2009-12-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

Sacramento was a lovely place. It's the third biggest city in California, and I think I'm right in saying that it's the state capital. It just had a nice feel about the place and the buildings were pretty. It helped a lot I think, that we were recommended a cool coffee house and in there, everyone seemed really cool – that always helps me like a place, when the people who live there seem cool and dress well!

We went to Old Sacramento, which is an area that has remained as it was back in the olden days – mainly just for tourists though. But nevertheless, it's a pretty little place full of shops. Kev wasn't keen as he was noticing lots of homeless people, but I didn't think it was any worse than any other big city we had been to. We went to State Park which was pretty fancy and generally just wandered around. We decided we would stay there that night and checked into a motel. We were pretty tired because we'd got up so early expecting our trip out of Tahoe to take hours. We spent the afternoon chilling out and when the sun went down we headed to the cool coffee shop for a coffee. We left there to try and find a take away place, but instead we found a cool bar – turns out it was an English bar, but it was cool. I wasn't drinking, so it meant it was my turn to drive, which Kev always finds pretty scary, but I managed!

We grabbed a Chinese takeaway and went back to the hotel and that was Sacramento.

The next morning, after grabbing a coffee from Weatherstones – my new favourite coffee houses– we drove north west through California and up into Oregon. We still hadn't decided whether we were going to go all the way up to Seattle, so we figured we'd make it up to Grant's Pass in Oregon and then make our mind up. The drive through California was so different to the other states we had been to, there was actually vegetation along most of these roads! Unsurprisingly, I had developed an annoying cough over the last couple of days, to go with the cold that I seem to be constantly fighting, so I was pretty tired on this drive, having kept myself awake most of the night. I decided to put the chair back and try and get some shut eye. With my feet up on the dashboard and my head right back on the floor, I was pretty comfy as Kev drove along the Interstate.

I woke to find Kev turning off the road – he was being pulled over – again! He hadn't been speeding, he hadn't been doing anything, but a police car had driven past him, then slowed right down and gone behind him and then pulled him over! Strangely, the policeman did not go to the driver's side, but instead came to my window. He peered in and asked us where we were headed. Kev got nervous again and forgot where we were going, so I replied 'Grant's Pass'. The policeman glanced around the car and then said 'OK guys, drive safe'...and that was that, no reason, no nothing – all we can imagine is that the policeman drove by and saw two feet on the dashboard with no head and wanted to check that Kev wasn't actually the '7 minute abs' guy who was carrying a dead hitch-hiker on the front seat! Satisfied that Kev wasn't a murderer, the policeman drove off and we continued, bemused, but amused, on our journey to Grant's Pass.

We got to Grant's Pass, which looked nothing like the pictures on the internet, it was just a bit of a nothing town – not nice, not horrible, just nothing. We checked into a travelodge and then walked just across the street to a bar where we could get dinner. Kev hadn't eaten all day and he ordered a huge burger. The woman who served us was like, 'you know that's two burgers in a bun, yeah?'. Kev told her he was starving and she just rolled her eyes and walked off. When the burger came the guy next to us commented 'wow, that's a big burger', but it turns out that Kev has an appetite bigger than an American's – who'd have thought it – and sure enough he ate the whole thing. I was craving vitamins and settled for a salad - the nicest salad I've ever eaten I must say – I suspect it was the ton of salt that was sprinkled all over my chicken!

The pub played awesome music and it was a typical American red neck style bar, where we all sat along the bar and watched sport on the TV screens. Kev was a bit freaked out because it looked exactly like the bar in the film 'Monster' which is a pretty gross film, so gross in fact that I refuse to watch more than 10 mins! But we had a nice evening and then headed back to the motel.

We needed to decide whether we were going to head north or south from Grant's Pass. We both really wanted to go to Portland and Seattle, but it was a long drive and we weren't sure. We realised that the Portland in Oregon was actually not the Portland we had wanted to go to (we wanted to go to Portland in Maine, which is the other side of this little country!!) and we decided that Seattle was too far, we were getting sick of long drives, so the decision was made that we would head south instead.

That night, we didn't have the best night's sleep in the world because it was absolutely freezing. Whenever we switched the heating on it must have churned up dust or something and it made me cough ridiculously, so we were forced to put up with the cold instead!

So, the next morning we drove down to Crescent City which is just on the northern tip of the Redwood Forest National Park. It wasn't a long drive and it seemed like a nice enough place when we got there. The park ranger in the tourist info was super helpful and the Pharmacist in the Chemist was lovely when he sold me some cough medicine, so we were happy to spend a night there. We didn't do much that day though, just ate lunch in a traditional dinner and did some laundry. In the evening, Kev popped out to get a Taco Bell – we had been meaning to try Taco Bell since we got to America because they look so good on the adverts – turns out, the adverts lie! No, it was OK and cheap, did the job, filled a hole, but don't think I'll be going out of my way to get a Taco Bell again.

The following day, we drove down to Redwood Forest. The trees there are just crazy big. We did one little hike and it kind of freaked me out to be in such a huge forest. But Kev was having a great time, climbing trees and running around, I think he reverted back to being a little boy for just a short while!

We continued the drive, which is totally worth doing. Kev had been getting sick of the driving in America. He says it either just really boring straight roads that go on forever and there's no other traffic around, or it's the opposite, where there are a million cars, switching lanes and going super fast – so it's either boring or stressful. So when we got to Redwood, I think Kev was pleased to be able to do some normal driving again, through the forest and on a windy road, with plenty to look at.

We drove though the Elk Meadows and saw a few Elks and then found ourselves in a town called Eureka. We had intended to stay in Eureka that night so we stopped and got some lunch and had a bit of a wander around. It didn't seem like a great place so we decided to move on to the next town, Fortuna. We were glad we did because as we were driving out of Eureka we saw what a truly horrible place it was. There was a million homeless people all loitering around the streets and the only motel we saw was full of bums hanging around outside. We were glad to get back on the Freeway and out of that place.

By the time we got to Fortuna, it was getting dark, so we just checked in to a Best Western Motel. It was above budget and I think at first Kev was a bit annoyed that I'd gone ahead and booked it. But that changed when he saw the huge reclining chair in our room, and he settled into that for the night, re-enacting that episode of Friends where Joey and Chandler shout 'Draw' and catapult their reclining seats back – it amused him.

After an awesome breakfast, where I learned how to use a waffle iron (I don't even like waffles, but I wanted to have a go anyway) we drove on to the Avenue of Giants, which is another part of the Redwood Forest. The trees here are so tall it is nuts and we did a couple of nice little walks and again, Kev had plenty of fun climbing trees.

And after that, we began the long drive to San Francisco. We stopped off in a lovely little place called Willets and got a coffee and some groceries, but that turned out to be a bad idea. From Willets to San Fran there were no rest stops and the two of us became so desperate for the toilet that it hurt!! We got to the Golden Gate Bridge and were overjoyed to see a visitor centre which had toilets. We literally ran from the car to the toilets, it would have been hysterical had it not hurt so much!

We took a few photos on the bridge and it was nice to see other tourists for a change. We haven't seen many tourists anywhere that we've been in America, so it felt nice to be surrounded by others who weren't from the place.

Back into the car and to the motel in San Fran. We instantly knew we liked this city when we were driving in. The buildings are beautiful and we had to drive up this hill that was literally like 90 degrees steep – well maybe not that steep, but I honestly though the car was going to topple backwards. And before I go into more details about San Fran, here's Kev with some pictures of the story so far....

Check this!... Awesome!!

2009-12-11T21:40:00.001-08:00

Snow place like home...

2009-12-11T20:39:00.000-08:00

Salt Lake City

2009-12-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

The Last Crusade!

2009-12-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

Thank Utah - Bryce Canyon

2009-12-11T19:42:00.000-08:00

It's Snow Time!

2009-12-11T19:38:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've updated, think I must be getting lazy! So we left Panguitch and drove to Bryce Canyon. It was first thing in the morning when we got there and my god, it was the coldest place we've ever been to. We drove right up to the viewpoint and yes, it was an outstanding view, but despite wearing 3 t-shirts, a thermal long sleeve top, 2 fleece jumpers and an anorak, plus tights, legwarmers, jeans, gloves, hat, scarf etc... neither me or Kev could bring ourselves to stand there long and appreciate the view! Instead, as you'll see from the photos, we quickly snapped a few while huddling together and gritting our teeth on the cliff edge.

We drove back down the road, but quickly stopped off to take an amusing photo by the 'Welcome to Bryce Canyon' sign – who knew setting a timer on the camera and running in the snow to get into the photo was so much fun, we laughed so much!

Next we stopped off at Ruby's restaurant for a coffee. Kev had wanted to stay at Ruby's last night but I said I'd rather stay in Panguitch town – turns out I should have listened to Kev because Ruby's was a dream compared to the dodgy motel we had chosen at Panguitch! Yep, as usual, should have listened to Kev! So Ruby's is a restaurant and hotel that has been at Bryce Canyon since the turn of the century, when a guy named Reuben first realised the canyon was there and encouraged people to come see it. The restaurant, hotel, shop, pub etc... is now still run by Reuben's family and their gift shop is the best place in the world. If we had had endless money, we could have spend a fortune on stag's heads, cowboy hats and belt buckles – probably a good thing we didn't eh!

We spent the rest of the day driving through Utah to a place called Moab, right near the border of Colorado. The drive through Utah was stunning and we came to the conclusion that Utah totally goes to the toilet all over the scenery of New Zealand! It's just amazing, better than Arizona even and that was pretty good there too!

We got to Moab and decided to leave 'The Arches' till the next day as the national park was much bigger than we thought and it was getting late in the afternoon. So we just checked into a motel, got some dinner and that was about that.

The next morning we got up early and drove into the Arches national park, where Indiana Jones (The Last Crusade) was filmed. Kev was obviously, very excited about being there and I think he enjoyed the park much more than I did. To me it was just a load of big rocks that have formed arches – to Kev, it was the chance to live a dream!!

It was still pretty early when we left The Arches, but it was a long and beautiful drive to Salt Lake City. After hours of driving up the longest, straightest, most deserted roads we've ever seen, we then embarked on the road into Salt Lake City and my god, what a shock to the system that was! The road into SLC was the scariest road ever. No-one sticks to the speed limit, no one lets you change lane and there are like a million cars on the 4 lane highway – scary stuff, and to be honest, I think the drive into the city put us off the city itself. If it hadn't been for that, I think we would have stayed in SLC longer, but we both had it in our minds that we had to drive out of there at some point and we should probably just get it over and done with!

Salt Lake City was a beautiful place though. Temple Square was just stunning and I loved the way all the boys walked around in black suits and all the girls wore really geeky long skirts. I hear SLC has a great Emo/punk/rock culture about it, but I certainly didn't see any evidence. I did see a teenage wedding taking place at the beautiful church of the Latter Day Saints- the bride and groom looked about 14 years old and it made me wonder what number wife this one way for the groom! I would have loved to have stayed longer in SLC, but only if we knew people there who could have given us an insight into the weird Mormon world that goes on there. But, alas, we didn't know anyone and we were very aware that the storms were on their way and we needed to get west as soon as possible. So we left a few hours later and made the surprisingly easy drive out of the city – they let you leave Mormon Country much more easily than they let you in! Driving through the salt planes next to the Great Salt Lake (the third, I think, saltiest lake in the world) was pretty awesome, just huge flat planes of salt for as far as the eye could see. Utah has the best scenery in the world, fact!!

We drove right through Utah and eventually ended up back in the state of Nevada, but this time we were right up in the north of Nevada. We needed to stop somewhere for the night, so we found a motel in a town called Elko. Elko was a bit of a dive, just a poor man's Vegas really. Lots of neon signs and casinos, but we got a cheap motel and stayed in watching TV all evening, so it didn't really matter much to us what the place was like.

Elko was just a stop off for us on our way back to California and Lake Tahoe. So the next morning we got straight back on the road and drove to Tahoe City, just over the California border. Instantly we knew we like Tahoe. The local pub was called Rosie's and it over looked the amazingly huge lake. The people were friendly and the place was a beautiful little town. We checked a few motels to see where we could get for the cheapest, but everywhere seemed expensive. We stopped at one who said they could give us a room for $77. It was over budget and it didn't even look that nice from outside, but we though, well, we're not going to get much cheaper and Rosie's is just round the corner, so it was meant to be!! We got our key and went into our room, expecting yet another boring motel room. To our surprise, we opened the door to heaven! Our room was a white oasis of cleanliness and behind a wall of glass bricks was a fantastic heart shaped jacuzzi. Tahoe City was our favourite place ever!!

That evening was the night the locals were lighting the Christmas tree and I got quite excited by that prospect. Santa was due to arrive at 6pm and it was bitterly cold out there, so we decided we needed to head to Rosie's to get a quick hot toddy in before Santa's arrival. Rosie's was an awesome little American bar. The barman was a real character called Dennis and the locals really made us feel at home. Kev loved the place so much that I let him stay inside, while I layered myself up in lots of clothes and then popped across the road to see Santa.

As a huge American fire truck arrived, all the kids started screaming 'Santa, Santa'. Bless them they were so happy to see this fat man dressed up in a costume, but I was just excited to see the big fire engine and I proceeded to ignore the big man and just take photos of the trucks! One of the firemen noticed and offered to take a picture of me with the truck, which totally made my Christmas! The firemen were lovely and told me all about Tahoe and how the tourists have priced the locals out and now all the local firemen etc...have to live in Reno (a place we passed through on the way, which wasn't very nice!). It was such a lovely friendly vibe in Tahoe, we were having a great night.

Back in the pub, the locals were making Kev feel welcome in there too. They were nuts in there. Tahoe people have a thing about shots of Jegermeister, or anything that is alcoholic basically, and they readily involved us in their tradition. We ended up getting pretty drunk and were very thankful we weren't going to be on the roads that night, because it seems drink driving is not an issue for these people. They all had miles to drive home and even the bar man, who drank a shot every time he served a customer pretty much, had 30 miles to drive home – don't get on the roads in Tahoe at night – that's my tip. Luckily for us, we just had to stumble our way back to the motel just 2 minutes up the road. It had been a great night and one of the few times we had really let our hair down in America.

The next morning we were gutted that we had to leave. We wanted to stay just one more night, but the storm was due to come into Tahoe that evening at around 3pm. If we didn't get out before then, we wouldn't be getting out for a few days, so we had to go! We left about half ten and drove up the local road to the Interstate (motorway). Just as we got to the motorway, it started snowing heavily and as we got onto the interstate we saw a big sign saying all cars had to carry snow chains. We didn't have any snow chains, so we had to take the turn off and go to the garage. At the garage we were sold some snow chains for $70 and some rubber bungies that hold them on better, or something like that – to be honest, I was so scared at that moment in time that the woman in the garage could have told me I needed to buy everything in their shop to make it across the summit of the mountain alive, and I would have believed here – she could have bankrupted me if she had wanted!! Just as we had bought the chains, so they put restrictions on the interstate saying that everyone had to put their snow chains on. We didn't have a clue what we were doing and it was bitterly cold there at the garage. It seemed like total chaos and reminded me of one of those Armageddon films where the storm to end all storms was coming to finish the world off. Car upon car full of people were pulling into the garage to buy snow chains and it just seemed like everyone was getting ready for the end!! Thankfully, some guy who looked amazing like Justin Timberlake, came up and asked us if we wanted him to put the chains on for us. We had never been so grateful to anyone, even if it did cost us $20 for the privileged (that's the only reason I know this guy wasn't actually JT – somehow I don't think he'd have been working the snowy streets for $20!).

Snow chains on, it was time to hit the scary road and we got back onto the motorway, right into a stand still traffic jam. We had no idea what was going on, all we knew was that we were not moving and the snow was getting worse. Both of us started feeling very claustrophobic as we couldn't go back, couldn't go forward and couldn't see a thing. The storm was a white out and Kev said out loud what we were both thinking: 'I hate just sitting here, feels like we're just being buried!' It wasn't nice at all and I was playing a movie in my head where the snow got so high that we all had to stand on our car roofs to escape while helicopters tried to rescue us all one by one! My imagination will really be the end of me!!

Eventually, the traffic started moving and as we reached the front of the queue we realised we were all just being turned round because the storm was so bad, they had closed the Interstate! We had two choices, either stay in Truckee (basically a town that is a huge service station for the motorway) and be stuck there in a Holiday Inn for days, or try and make it back to Tahoe City where we would have a nice hotel, a nice pub and nice people. You can imagine which option we chose.

The drive back down to Tahoe City was pretty scary, but snow chains are awesome things and you don't slip at all. We just took it really slowly and made it in once piece. I think Kev's eyes nearly fell out from concentrating so hard as he drove through the storm! They were certainly blood shot when we got there.

Our hearts fell when we saw that our hotel had closed it's doors due to the storm, but they rose again when we realised the lady in Number 3 was giving out keys to rooms! We managed to get our old room back and we knew we'd be OK! We went straight to Rosie's where we got a lovely welcome that made us feel happy to be stranded here. Had some food, a few drinks and then got introduced to the local film maker of the area. He was a nice guy, but was totally high on something that wasn't alcohol. He insisted that if we were still stuck the next night we had to stay with him!

We left the pub and headed to our hotel where I had a great time in the heart shaped jacuzzi watching Jaws on VHS! It was a good night!

The next morning we woke up and the snow was amazing. Our car was totally buried and the snow outside came up to way over my knees. We left the room and tried to walk down the stairs to ground level, but they were buried in snow as well. It was a really lovely soft, powdery snow so it was fun to slide down the stairs! We used the snow shovels to dig out our car, but we knew we weren't going anywhere that day – the snow was still falling heavily and as we dug out the car, so it just got buried more. We popped to the Safeway next door and stocked up on emergency rations just in case. We didn't know how long we would be stuck, although it was predicted it would stop later that day. We then went back to our room and just watched films in the bath for most of the day!! We couldn't go back to Rosie's as we didn't want to bump into that guy as we had no good excuse for not taking him up on his offer of letting us stay at his place, no good excuse that is other than, we were sensible people!!

That afternoon, the snow eventually began to stop. We got up the next morning and knew we had to go. The snow had stopped and the next storm was due tomorrow, so this was our chance. We wrapped up warm – it was minus 8 degree Fahrenheit outside, which is minus 22 degrees C!! The we scrapped all the ice off our car and piled our luggage onto the back seat (our trunk had frozen shut!).

The drive out of Tahoe was surprisingly easy. The roads were icy, but we didn't need our snow chains, so we stopped off at the garage in Truckee and I took the chains off – all by myself- for me this was living our a childhood dream, pretending I was a mechanic and fixing the car -thankfully, I didn't grow up to be a lesbian!!

The interstate was open again and had been cleared completely. The roads were quiet and we made it to Sacramento in pretty good time. And before I tell you about the next leg of our journey, I'll hand over to Kev for some pictures so far....

Blaze of Glory

2009-12-02T19:49:00.000-08:00

Arizona

2009-12-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

Two hours later and we were still stuck on the freeway, mostly at a complete standstill. There was some important person being escorted up the freeway ahead of us and the police were taking up all the lanes around whoever this person was, so the rest of the traffic was totally backed up behind. We were thankful that it wasn't summer here as I would not like to be stranded on the freeway in the summer heat here. So anyway, eventually we came to the Hoover Dam which took forever, and I mean forever, to get across and it didn't even look that impressive anyway!!

From there, the drive to Flagstaff, Arizona was pretty straight forward although as we drove through the desert it began to snow. It was strange seeing snow falling in the desert but it didn't cause us a problem as we were nearly at our hostel. Having left Las Vegas in the sunshine, wearing shorts and T-Shirt, we then got out of the car in Flagstaff to below freezing temperatures – it was a bit of a shock to the system. We checked straight into the hostel to get warm!

The hostel was an odd little place, it reminded us of a huge student house. All the furniture was old and it was super hippy, but it seemed OK (as OK as anything was going to seem compared to the Bellagio). We decided to head straight out for lunch and were pleased when the guy behind reception recommended a place called Beaver Street Brewery – he knew us well already! Te brewery was just round the corner and we instantly knew we would like Falgstaff. It's an historic small town in Arizona and you can actually walk places rather than drive, which is so nice! So we walked in the light snow to the Brewery and sampled some of their home made beers – my favourite being Bramble Berry, which tasted like squash! We had the most awesome meal and we were having good feelings about Flagstaff. We came out of the restaurant and saw that the snow was coming down really heavy now. The ground was covered with more snow that I think I've ever walked in and it was all Christmassy and beautiful. For the first time I felt Christmassy – you can't feel like it's Christmas when you're in hot countries!

We walked back to the hostel and settled down for what would be the first of many sleepless nights, as this hostel turned out to be the noisiest place we've ever stayed. I don't know what it was about this hippy house but it just seemed to attract noisy hippies, old and young. I think somewhere on the website it must have said, please only stay here if you are really inconsiderate and loud, and we must have missed that when we booked it! Not only were the walls paper thin and the hippies really loud, but to add to it, the pub outside attracted a rowdy bunch and there was certainly no double glazing. I tried the earplugs that we had but they didn't help! Nevertheless, we stayed at that hostel 4 nights because it was nice to stay in one place for a long time and the confine of our little room did begin to feel like home.

As for the rest of our stay in Arizona I'm afraid that, while it was awesome, I don't think there's going to be too much to say really on the blog. I feel Kev's role will be more important here and the pictures will speak for themselves, but never one to give Kev the staring role that he perhaps deserves, I will continue to bore you with some written blog first anyway!

So the first morning in Flagstaff we had a lie in and then just spent the afternoon wandering around the town and getting to know the place. This is the sort of America I had wanted to come to...really old cattle ranchy style buildings and just a really welcoming lovely atmosphere. We went back to the Brewery for lunch again and even popped to Walmart to get some supplies. We declined to pick up one of their many guns in Walmart and I was disappointed that we they didn't sell fruit and vegetables. Then we headed back to the hostel for yet another sleepless night.

The next day we went over to the Grand Canyon. I'd wanted to visit the Grand Canyon since I was little, so I was really looking forward to it. We could only visit the south rim as the north rim is closed in winter, but that was OK. It was about a 2 hour drive to the south rim and it was awesome. As I say, there's no point me being cheesy and trying to describe it, the pictures will show you. We used the shuttle bus to take us to a few different view points. It's really high in the Canyon (and in Flagstaff), 7000ft above sea level so it feels like you're out of breathe all the time, even when you just do a little walking. Anyway, the best one being the Pima Point (or something like that) – that viewpoint really gave you the chance to see the scale of this place and the Colorado river and the Grand Rapids below, it was absolutely beautiful.

Once we had breathed in the sights we began our trip out of the national park. We were driving down this huge road, which seemed like a main road, and were searching for a sign to tell us the speed limit. We saw the sign for 45 mph too late and by that time we had the police behind us and yep, before we knew it they were flashing their lights and we were being pulled over. Neither of us have ever been pulled over by the police before so it was kind of exciting and I totally felt like we were on a TV show. So the guy in his sherrify uniform and little cowboy hat came and tapped on the window and Kev rolled the window down. He informed us that we had been going 61mph in a 45mph and asked if we had any reason for going so fast. Kev explained that we didn't realise we were speeding and then we heard that line, ha, I would have loved it if I hadn't been worried about a fine...'License and registration documents please'.

The Sherrif guy took away our passports, vehicle registration and driving licenses and made us sit and wait for like 15 minutes. Then he came back and told us he was going to let us off with 'no fine, no nothing!'. He handed Kev the documents back and noticed that Kev was shaking like a leaf. 'Why you so nervous, why you shaking?'. It was hysterical because we'd seen that on 'Police, Camera, Action' where they pull people over and they're shaking so the police search the car and find like stash loads of drugs in the vehicle. So immediately, I'm thinking, ah great, they don't know that Kev shakes like a leaf all the time and now they're going to search the trunk!! But it was all fine and Kev explained that he'd never been pulled over before so he was a bit nervous. The police man could not believe that by our age we'd never been pulled over before, but he bought it (good, as it was the truth) and he let us go after having a bit of a joke with us about how he should make our first time a bad time so we don't do it again. We assured him that we'd learnt our lesson and I restrained myself from advising him that American roads really should have more signs to tell people what the speed limit is – I don't think that would have gone down too well! The fact that he found it hard to believe we'd never been pulled over might go some way to demonstrate to you how many traffic cops there are here. You're constantly seeing people getting pulled over – I'm sure they're just there, waiting at the side of the road, so that they can make more American Road Cop TV programmes!!

Back at the hostel we chilled out and then headed to a place called Maloneys, another pub in the town centre. We couldn't stay in for the entire evening, even though we were trying to save money. We had no TV in our room and that hostel was so god dam loud. And in addition to it all, just through the centre of Flagstaff is this railway line and every 15 minutes or so (maybe it's more like every ½ hour) a huge huge huge train goes by and toots it's horn for ages, while the crossing bell tolls for even longer. It's deafening whenever it goes by and it does that 24 hours a day!

The next morning, we got up and headed to Sedona. Sedona had been totally recommend to me by Dominic and so I was keen to go there. The drive was only about an hour and it wasn't even that many miles, but it was a road full of switchbacks, which are like windy roads, so it took ages. When we arrived in Sedona, it was beautiful, although very geared up for tourists. But it was nice because at this time of year there's hardly any tourists in these areas – too dam cold for most sane people – my Fiji suntan is now well and truly gone, in fact, Kev was almost black when he left Fiji, that's no longer the case!

We stayed in Sedona for a couple of hours, browsing and buying my final ring and then we headed back up the switchbacks to the hostel for our last night in Flagstaff. We didn't actually do anything that night, just watched a couple of films on the lap top and put up with the screaming children that had come to stay in the room next to us for the night. We made a good plan of what we intend on doing and where we plan to go over the next couple of weeks, but that's changing all the time. For example, the plan was to wake up today and drive to Page. We did that, and then we kept going, so the plan's changed already.

So today we did drive to Page. The drive was desolate and kind of freaky – it's wierd to drive for hours and see literally nothing but desert. It made me a bit funny to think how far away we were from a coastline, probably further than I've ever been from a coastline. Kev couldn't understand why that mattered, and I don't know why really, just feels strange. We passed through many little native townships, which were strange too. They have these little huts, almost like shanty town huts along the road and then there's other townships which you know are just full of rednecks with their millions of wrecked trucks out in their ranches. We stopped at the Colorado Horseshoe Bend point near Page and wee parked the car to walk the ¾ miles over the dunes to the lookout point. It was an awesome sight, but neither me or Kev could bring ourselves to get close enough to the edge to take a really good photo! That point is super high and there's no railings or barriers, just a huge drop of about 5000ft to the Colorado River.

We drove on to the entrance to Antelope Canyon, which people had said we should see. It's a beautiful sand dune that has been petrified and sculpted by the wind to form this beautiful scenery. But when we got there they weren't letting people through on their own and we would have had to get in a truck with this woman who would have charged us about £40 to drive us the 3 miles to the canyon and then she would have waited an hour for us to look around and then drive us back. For one, we didn't want to pay £40 and two, we didn't want to spend an hour there. So we decided not to bother, we'll probably regret that, but there we go, plenty more to see.

We then drove in to the centre of Page to find out how we get to see Lake Powell. We were directed over a big dam and there we found the view point. Lake Powell is huge, but it's not the same of like Lake Taupo in New Zealand. In Lake Taupo it looks like a sea, you can't even see the other shores, but in Lake Powell, it's a different shape, it's long and so it doesn't look that impressive, I'm sure many people will disagree with me, and we have started to wonder whether we've seen so much on this trip that now things aren't standing out to us like they should do!

We drove back into Page to check out where we were planning on staying, but when we got back to the centre we decided we didn't really want to stay there. There was nothing wrong with Page, but nothing that really kept us there either. It was only 1pm and we didn't know what we would fill our time doing if we stayed. Page was only founded in the 1950s, so it's not the most beautiful of towns (although obviously the surrounding scenery is nice). And it really seemed like the only thing there was millions of churches – seriously, I've never seen so many. So we decided to drive on up to Kanab, which was where we had planned on staying tomorrow night.

An hour and a half later we had crossed the Arizona border and were now in Kanab, Utah. Again, this was a small town, but nicer than Page, but still, not a huge reason to stay. It was now only 3pm and the drive to Bryce Canyon (which was the point we wanted to get to eventually anyway, Page and Kanab were just stop off's in case the drive was too long) was only another hour and a half. I wasn't keen on spending a night in Bryce Canyon as it's 9000ft above sea level, which creeps me out, so we agreed to stay in the nearest town – a place called Panguitch.

Panguitch is a strange place, but nice enough. There's nothing here and the people have super strong accents and the guy who checked us into our motel seemed like a total redneck, but it's a sweet little place. We popped to the shop, got some dinner and settled in for a night infront of the TV – we've been 4 days without one, so it's nice to have normality back in our room, even if outside is totally alien.

Tomorrow we'll head to Bryce Canyon and then up towards Moab to see the arches, but for now, I'll let Kev show you what I've been talking about in a visual form. xx

Vegas baby!

2009-11-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

2009-11-30T21:08:00.000-08:00

We left Anaheim on Wednesday morning and prepared for our drive to Vegas. It wasn't meant to be a long drive, just 4 and a half hours of so, but when I switched on the news that morning I heard that 'today is going to be the worst travel day of the year!'. With it being Thanksgiving on Thursday, the roads were set to be pretty bad that day and we expected the worst. But actually, the drive was fine and while it did take us a while to get out of LA, it didn't actually take us that long to get to Vegas. We were slightly disappointed that it was still daylight when we arrived. We had been hoping for that 'Hangover' scene where they drive along and then all of a sudden they see the Vegas bright light skyline. We kept seeing skylines and saying, is that Vegas, and then realising that no, it wasn't. Eventually, we drove on to Tropicana Avenue and saw the MGM Grand on the corner and we knew that we were, at last, in Vegas.

We found our motel, which totally looked like a horror movie set and we immediately headed out to explore the strip, which was conveniently placed just around the corner. By now it was getting dark and the bright lights of Vegas were shinning. The place is just nuts. Everything there is so massive that you forget how big each casino/hotel is. You look at one and think, well, it doesn't look that huge in comparison to the one next to it, but then you have to stop yourself and think, but if you put that Casino in the middle of Glasgow it would be gigantic. We walked into the MGM Grand and they've got a big Rainforest Cafe, like in London, and Kev said 'Oh look at the snakes...', I turned to admire the silly little puppet snakes slithering around the walls. A few moments later Kev turned to me and said 'Oh my god, there are lions here...', again, I turned to inspect what I thought would be more fury puppets, but no.... in the MGM Grand lobby there are actually two huge lions!! As you walk in there is a huge glass room where these two lions live, and from that moment on, we knew that the next few days were going to be like no other days on this trip! Kev took great pleasure walking under the glass walkway where the lions slept above his head. I decided to bypass that tunnel and walk directly through the masses of fruit machines packed with old people pumping their quarters down the drain to the ring ding ding of the gambling addiction.

Just opposite the MGM is the New York New York Casino, which is nowhere near as classy but they do have an awesome roller-coaster that goes all around the outside. It's just the craziest place you can imagine. We headed straight into the Hard Rock Cafe to get some dinner and in there it was like finding solace. They played awesome music, it wasn't busy, and you could observe the chaos of the strip from behind the glass windows. We decided to start the evening with an appetiser of buffalo wings. We asked our server what was the difference between 'Classic Rock' and 'Heavy Metal' sauce and he assured us that Heavy Metal was spicy but he 'didn't think it was spicy at all'. Now, I know, I know what you're all thinking... for a Classic Rock lover like me I should have known, always stick with the Classics. But the Bon Jovi angel wasn't on my shoulder that night and we trusted our server and opted for the Heavy Metal. I have to say, the choice was worth it simply for the amount I laughed. The wings were hotter than Rosy in Kuala Lumpur, but Kev seemed to approach the dish like it was a challenge. He was torn between the fact that the wings tasted so good, but yet with every bite, a layer of his lips seemed to painfully dissolve like they were being dipped in acid. I can't tell you how funny it was to watch him persist with his portion, a look of sheer joyous indulgence masked by the pain of human mouth tissue erosion. We laughed a lot and just as we were finishing the bowl, our helpful server brought us over 2 glasses of water -I've never seen Kevin glare at anyone before, but there was murder in his eyes when he thanked our waiter for the overdue quality H2O.

Aside from that, we had a great meal in Hard rock. We were completely preoccupied with the table top jukebox, with which you place bets for the next song on a touch screen. And at the entrance of the restaurant, Kev was like a kid in a candy shop when he saw the huge touch screen information board. It was like a futuristic computer that you wouldn't look out of place in Mission Impossible and Kev spent ages moving things around and playing with the information on the wall – it was like his inner geek was being allowed to roam free in a cool environment, he was truly in his element.

We spent the rest of that evening walking the strip and we only made it about half way along. We passed the Bellagio, but refrained ourselves from entering as we wanted to save that treat for our stay there on Friday. There was plenty more to see anyway. We stopped by in Caesars Palace which is the biggest place I've ever seen and being such lovers of 'The Hangover' we wanted to go to the desk and ask if 'this really was Caesar's Palace'. We didn't off course, far too British to make silly jokes like that. We then went across the road to The Rockhouse which was the strangest Rock pub I've ever been too. It was incredibly quiet and we soon realised why – they put off people who don't like Rock music by calling the place The Rockhouse, but then also manage to put off the people that do like Rock music by playing nothing but hip hop inside – funny marketing techniques. Inside the only people enjoying themselves were those playing a game of beer ping pong. Beer ping pong, for those of you who don't know (and I'm ashamed to admit that included me until this trip) is where two opponents stand either end of a table. At each end of the table is a triangle of plastic pint glassed filled with about a shot full of beer. The aim is to throw a ping pong ball into your opponents glass and then he has to drink his shot of beer (In Scotland I suspect this game would be played with shots of Abysinth, but here Bud Light seems to do the trick!). I think me and Kev must be getting old because we watched these two couples throw ping pong balls at each other, all we could think was 'urr, that ball lands on the floor, then eventually lands in their drink and then they down it...' - ah, the crazy days of me and Kev are well and truly gone!

The next day we slept really late. I had yet another cold and some horrible sinus infection that meant my nose bled and that freaked me right out (Kev got it too but complained far less than me). So we had a long lie in and then hit the strip about 3pm. We started with Excalibur (a big kind of Cinderella's Castle thing) and the Luxur Casinos (a giant pyramid) which weren't very nice at all and then we decided to do as the American's do and to get the monorail service from the Luxur to New York New York. This was a distance of about a three minute walk, but hey, when in Rome!

We grabbed a cheeky hot dog in New York (seriously, I'm going to be like Roseanne Barr when I leave here, the size of a whale in a body leached of vitamins). Then we continued our walk up the strip. We stopped in Treasure Island and had a look around the gift shop. Treasure Island is tacky and cheap but awesome – it's a big pirate style casino and outside they have two massive pirate ships that sometimes fight (although they weren't working while we were there). The gift shop was full of pirate style Vegas gifts and I indulged in a new wallet (to put all the masses of money that I'm not going to have when we get home in! ) and a lovely vest top with a big skull on it (to go with all the other skull and crossbones clothes I have in my wardrobe – this is something a girl can never have enough of). We stopped in the bar and enjoyed a Vodka Martini which stung the nostrils and burned the lining off my throat (but it's the only drink I enjoy when I'm trying to pretend I'm sophisticated!). Kev had a Mojito but drank it like juice so wasn't allowed a second.

We made our way back down to New York New York because Kev really wanted to go to Coyote Ugly for happy hour (hmm, I wonder why?). When we got there he hated it. We walked in and within moments a big drunk bloke had fallen on me and even more annoying was that there were two bars – at one there was a huge queue with one barmaid, and the other bar was on the other side of the pub and to get to it you had to cross a dance floor where a lady was shouting at people from on top of the bar and making them dance. If you could make it across that gauntlet you might be able to get a drink but you'd probably have to flirt with the semi naked girl dancing on the bar to get it. All I could think was 'ohhh, if she slipped in those heels, that is going to hurt', I suspect all the men in that bar were not so concerned about her welfare. But for Kev, any girl, no matter how pretty, no matter how semi naked, that comes between him and his beer isn't worth the hassle, so we decided to leave.

We chose to stick with what we knew and went back to Hardrock and from there were headed down to Bally's where we had tickets to see a traditional Vegas show – Jubilee. Bobby in LA had totally recommended that we go see this show and it probably wasn't something we would have done if it hadn't been recommended so highly. And we were so glad we saw it. It was absolutely like nothing we'd ever seen before. It's a topless show where the girls wear awesome costumes on their head and lower half and the men sing and wave jazz hands. It's as camp as Christmas but awesome and Sarita, the men are as naked as the women so there's no feminism needed here (in fact, if you have an issue with feminism, take it out on the thousands of Mexicans who stand on the strip giving out flyers advertising 'girls to your door in 20 minutes'. Seriously, these flyers are graphic and not only were they almost forcing them into my hand – making me slightly concerned that I look either like a boy or a lesbian, but they also chuck them on the floor for kids to pick up – as we saw many cheeky kids doing and secretly stuffing them in their pockets before their parents could see, I'm sure they'll make a few bucks at school with those bad boys – gross – no wonder America is messed up, there are so many kids in Vegas learning about drinking, smoking, gambling and every other sin you can imagine by the time they reach 10 years old – rant over!). But back to Jubilee – no one is naked really, it's a traditional Vegas show and while the women do have their tops off, and the men do wear skimpy pants, it's not seedy, it's like I suppose a really old fashioned west end show. The sets and the dancing were awesome, and I'm not making it sound good am I, but it really was worth seeing. We laughed a lot at first when it started because we couldn't believe we were sitting watching something like that, but it was great.

After the show we wandered around a few more casinos and then stumbled across an outdoor Karaoke bar. We sat down and ordered a drink As I did so, another bar maid draped herself over the bar and asked the guy next to me if he had a light. She could barely speak and she questioned whether it was right for a bar maid to be asking a customer for things – I suspect she should have been more worried about being totally wasted while on her shift, but maybe things like that don't matter in Vegas. Anyway, we sat down and were having a great time watching everyone getting up and singing really badly. Just as I was preparing myself to show those amateurs how it's really done, a guy plonked himself down at our table. We really should have known that we were in trouble when the first thing he said was (as the security guard walked away from the bar and into the nearest casino) 'thank god the security has gone, he was doing my head in'. Not a good start to any conversation but at first he seemed OK, just a little drunk. Then he started telling us that he was in Vegas with his girlfriend who had gone back to the hotel to bed. Later that story changed to his sister – knowing this guy though, perhaps they were one and the same – and then before we knew it the conversation had changed into how much of a hard man he was. He certainly wasn't threatening us, just showing off that ...'he could rip our heads off right now if he wanted to...', ...'wow, that's amazing...' I would reply in my finest English accent as I sat waiting for him to tell us about his new business idea....'Seven....Minute....Abs....' Now I fear that for anyone who hasn't seen 'Something About Mary' that you are not going to appreciate this joke, but me and Kev were looking at each other thinking, any minute now he was going to ask us to 'step into his office...because we're f***ing fired!'. He was the biggest serial killer on the loose that we have encountered so far in America, but it was hysterical how much he was like the psycho that Ted picks up on his way to Miami in the film. Thankfully, psycho guy stumbled off briefly to ask some other guys for a light and while his back was turned, me and Kev pegged it. It was so funny running away, checking over our shoulder, and I'm sure in reality he was harmless enough, but seriously....'seven, minute, abs!', that's all I've got to say – watch the film.

We found safety in the Paris Casino, which was like a breathe of fresh air. Inside the ceiling was painted like the sky and while you were in there it honestly felt like you were in the beautiful countryside of Paris, but strangely surrounded by slot machines and roulette tables. We stopped there for a bit and then headed back down to the MGM Grand. We were surprised by how quiet it was everywhere, but then it was Thanksgiving. We had a drink in the MGM and by now it was about 4 in the morning. I was ready to stay out all night (secretly because I didn't fancy heading back to our horror movie hotel in the dark while Seven Minute Abs was on the prowl), but Kev was disappointed with the quietness and we decided to go back to the motel. Thankfully, it wasn't far away, but we did put a big chest of draws in front of the door before we went to sleep...just in case!! (Mum and Lesley, don't worry, I'm dramatising, kind of...!)

Later that morning we woke, bleary headed and dicky tummy's and checked out of our motel. We got in the car and, much to Kev's joy, he drove down the strip. We pulled into the Bellagio car park and wandered in. It is by far the classiest Casino of them all, without a doubt. It's just beautiful in there and we were gutted that we were too early to check in right away. We spent the morning getting a coffee in the Mirage (which is nice, but not a patch on the Bellagio, although they do have a cool volcano display at night with fire bellowing out of a big rock) and wandering around the Venetian a bit more. The Venetian is pretty amazing. It has a big river thing running though it and from outside you can get a gondola along the river. We figured that as we didn't get a gondola ride when we were actually in Venice last year, we weren't going to get on a fake one, but we did appreciate the awesomeness of the Venetian all the same. Inside it has amazing painted ceilings and stunning pillars and it really does look impressive (but again, not a patch on the Bellagio). By now we had pretty much seen every Casino on the strip and it was about time to check into the Bellagio. I was feeling pretty rough and my nose was still bleeding, so I couldn't wait to get in and chill out. Our room was just perfect. The bathroom was the best part and the view from the 24^th floor Lake View room was amazing. Thank you to Matchlight for treating us! We reluctantly headed out to get dinner in Bally's (if we could have afforded room service we would have just stayed in!!) and then shot straight back to our room for the night. Within minutes I was soaking in a luxurious hot bath and then I wrapped myself in my robe, put on my Bellagio slippers, flipped the switch and as the electronic curtains opened to reveal the view of the Vegas strip, Kev popped the cork on the champagne and we settled down to enjoy the numerous water shows that the Bellagio put on. We tuned our TV into the water show music and sat staring out at the Eiffel Tower outside the Paris Casino as the illuminated fountains danced to classics such as 'Santa Baby' and 'A Little Less Conversation'. It was truly awesome and I can honestly say that anyone going to Vegas has to do this for at least one night. Eventually we tired of the water show and decided to watch some films instead. My choice was 'Funny People', which with a line up of Adam Sandler and Seth Rogan you would have thought would have been Funny – clue's in the title people, no? No! It's the most depressing film I've ever watched and the worst film at that. I've never been one to give up on films half way, unless I fall asleep, which does often happen, but I don't intentionally give up ever – that's like failing in a mission and I don't do that – but being as teary as I am half the time here, I really didn't need to watch this, so we switched it off half way through. Kev's choice was next and he opted for Bruno. This was a much funnier option but we were slightly disturbed by the end scene where the crazy guy in the audience at the wrestling match looks like he's going to burst a blood vessel when Sacha Baron Cohen starts fighting in the ring. If that's not bad enough, when it becomes clear that Bruno is a gay, this crazy red neck starts crying and actually looks like his whole world has fallen apart. While we're spending a month in a country where you can help yourself to any gun you want from you're local Walmart (ASDA to you and I) and where billboards on the side of the road read 'Guns...try one...', this kind of behaviour on a faux documentary style film is a little disconcerting.

Anyway, I fell asleep soon after but Kev stayed awake to enjoy the film. I think this night gave Kev the taste of luxury that he now craves and while I've never been happy in the grotty places we're staying at, now Kev is also wishing we could win the lottery and stay in places like that every night. While Kev stayed awake that night he did see 17 police cars surround Ceasar's Palace next door, something was kicking off but he couldn't see what... all I have to say is....Seven....Minute...Abs.

The next morning we hesitantly checked out of the Bellagio, as late as we could I might add. It was a little annoying that the maid woke us up at 9am to ask what time we would be checking out. I put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door from then on as I wanted a lie in, but yet a porter soon came knocking giving me the hairdryer that I had supposedly ordered. He wouldn't believe me that I hadn't ordered it so I took it anyway and went back to bed. About 10 minutes later the phone rang – it was the maid service ringing to check I had received the hair dryer I ordered – I think this was their subtle way of getting us out!! Kev was really sad to leave Vegas, he loved it there. I was sad too, I really like Vegas, but at the same time, I was happy to be going for now. Three days is plenty there and the crowds do get a bit bonkers and the 24 hourness of the place just gets a bit much. We'll definitely be back. In fact, Sarita, you fancy a trip? I reckon you'd love it! Out of all the Casinos there we would say that our favourites were the Bellagio (of course), Paris, the Venetian and the MGM and New York New York is nice in an un-intimidating way.

We picked up our car and drove down the rest of the strip to the Little White Chapel. I had wanted to take a photo of me and Kev outside the chapel and just post it on the blog to make everyone freak out. But Kev thought this was a little harsh of me as he thought both of our families would cry! His sense of humour is clearly not as cruel as mine, but I bowed to his sensibleness!

As soon as we left Vegas we got on the freeway and hit a huge traffic jam straight away....and that would be the beginning of our very long journey to Arizona.

Universal studios - continued

2009-11-29T21:23:00.000-08:00

Universal studios

2009-11-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

When your strange, faces come out of the rain...

2009-11-29T21:03:00.000-08:00

LA Confidential

2009-11-29T21:01:00.000-08:00

The highlight of our first proper day in LA was first thing in the morning when we headed down to Santa Monica beach to be faced with the funfair that to anyone of my generation (and anyone who deserves to be on this planet) is the one and only setting for The Lost Boys! We got up and drove down to Venice Beach and as soon as we walked from the car to the shore line, there it was, that awesome skyline that conjured up so many images of vampires and little Corey Haims that I could hardly contain myself, in fact, it would not have felt out of place if someone had started sweetly singing in my ear 'when you're strange...faces come out of the rain..when you're strange'. I was loving that view as soon as I saw it and my only regret on this trip (well strictly speaking not my only regret, but a big regret) was not going back for an evening view and strolling around the dodgy pier waiting for Kiefer Sutherland to come bite my neck! Anyway, after my initial exitement over the big funfair view, I was then overjoyed see Muscle Beach. Man, that place is hysterical. It's exactly as you could imagine it. A path full of roller bladers and then a gym on the beach where the old blokes wear Bill and Ted style tiny tops and spend their days sculpting their guns in the mid day heat, it was awesome! Got slightly embarrased though when, having considered how hot it was that day and had thought to myself, 'man, this is hot enough to melt tarmac', Kev told me to 'step over here'. As I walked over to join him, I couldn't contain my scream as the ground sank below me and for a split second I did think that I had predicted the future and the sun had melted the floor – but no, it was merely a rubber type of tarmac ready for us to fall on while causing no injury to ourselves as we excerted ourselves in the outdoor gym – what an amazing place!

So then, we walked from the beach on to the pier, which was dissappointingly tacky, and then back round again to Muscle Beach. We stopped off along the way when we saw a 'Corndog' sign as I was very keen to try my first meat on a stick. So a corn dog is like a hot dog, covered in a kind of corny bread stuff, deep fried on a stick and smothered in mustard. Having tried my first corn dog, I had to agree with Mary that 'there just aren't enough meats on sticks' (any 'Something About Mary' lovers will know what I mean', for the rest of you, you can just take my word for it – it's a heart attack on a piece of wood, but man it tastes so good). My first Corn dog experience was made that little bit extra special by the Rod Stewart wannabe that passed by and seranaded us with his rendition of 'Maggie May' – in reality, he was some guy in spandex, listening to Rod Stewart on his CD player (yes, CD player people) and dancing his way down Venice Beach while singing at the top of his voice. To give the man credit, if you can't do that on Venice Beach in LA then where can you do it and for a split second I was tempted to join the man!

We then headed back to the car and drove right through Santa Monica (which is a lovely place and not full of vampires at all) and through Beverely Hills right up to Hollywood. We did the tourist thing and went up to the Hollywood sign, took some photos, had a Starbucks, as you do, and then headed back to the hotel. We had a wee rest before heading over to the restaurant that we were meeting Mark and Bobby at. We had met Mark and Bobby in Vietnam, for those of you that don't remember, and I was so excited to see some friendy, familiar faces. Everyone in Fiji had told us we needed to try Mexican food in LA so it was a Mexican place we were meeting the guys. We drove up and pulled into the car park, where some guy stopped us and took our keys and told us he would park our car for us. Now, we knew about Valet parking, but are not posh enough in the UK to have ever experienced it. Here in LA, we though, well, this guy seems to know what he's doing and he's given us a tiny ticket, so it must be OK. For any con artist reading this blog (Mandy, I'm thinking of you lovely, this could make you bucks!!) try heading to America and giving tourists a scrap of paper in exchange for their car keys and then drive off! Honestly, we would not have known the difference! Thankfully, the restaurant was a nice one and the valet parking was genuine and we had the best evening. Meeting up with Bobby and Mark was so good. It makes such a difference when you can hang out with people you get on with and you don't have to spend the whole evening doing the whole 'ah, so yeah, I've been traveling for.... months, and I've been to this many places....etc'. We could just sit and have a really delicious meal and just chat. The night went too quickly and we were sad to leave (but also, slightly releaved to see our car again!).

The next morning we got up and headed to Univeral Studios. It was a boiling hot day and so we were happy to see that, once our bags had been searched, the queue to get in wasn't that long. We hadn't anticipated the ridiculous amount of time it took to serve each person here though and we were still waiting there about an hour later. Eventually, we paid our £70 and went in to the famous Universal Studios. For Kev, this was meant to be the highlight of America. He's worked in films for many years and has memorised every line of every film he's ever watched for the last 29 years, so for him, this was the big one. We started our trip by going on the set tour. Despite a slight blip in seating arrangements on the train when some rude family told us we were in the wrong seats – which we weren't, but hey, they were more annoying than us so we moved, we took our places and started the tour around the studios. We were a little dissapointed that the majority of the film sets were super old and not that interesting. In fact, I would say, the Desperate Housewives set was the most interesting bit, oh and the War of the Worlds one too, although passing by a airplane wreck made out of a real airoplane was slightly disconerting as we still have two flights to go!

After the tour we needed something to perk us up and the Jurassic Park ride was just the thing to do it. So we hopped on to the rollercoaster and for the first 5 minutes we were bored stupid as we were ferried around the 'Jurrassic Park', while fake dinosaurs spat freezing cold water on us (let me just clarify that LA in the sun is roasting, but as soon as your in shade, it's freezing, so this ride chilled us to the bone). The last 30 seconds of the ride was awesome though as we were dropped over a 90ft drop into water, which was awesome, althought not sure whether Kev's jeans were wet from the ride or wet from his fears by the end of it, just kidding, just kidding!!

We were then going to go and see a show at the 'Waterworld' arena, but as we stood in the queue, I started to wonder whether it was really worth it, as we didn't have loads of time and there was probably so much to see. Kev agreed and we left the queue, only to find out that there really isn't that much to see at Unviersal Studios. There's far less rides than we thought and basically, it's just a big theme park full of themed eating establishments. Wandering around made us realise why the 'all you can eat' tickets were so popular! We went to one last show at the Terminator 2 arena, which was a 3D show – it was OK but pretty outdated to be honest.

We headed back to the car and then began our drive to Anaheim. The drive should only have taken us 40 minutes, but in LA traffic, it took us about 2 hours. The traffic here is just crazy! Despite having 6 lanes on each side of the freeway, you still get stuck in traffic jams worse than the M8 in Glasgow! Finally, we arrived at our motel in Anaheim and despite looking like the location for an horrific horror movie, it was an OK place.

We didn't have time to dwell on the torturous things that might happen to us in that room (and for anyone who has seen 'No Vacancy'...spot on!). Before we knew it, it was time to get a taxi to Disneyland – now there's a sentence I never thought I'd say. Disneyland was about half a mile from our hotel, but you just can't walk anywhere here, it's not cut out for walking, so instead we had to pay like $13 to get a taxi. Disneyland was another bright light area prepped for toursits but with very little more than more themed eating establishements. We found our way to the House Of Blues, catching another cheeky corn dog on the way, and sat and had a drink while the queue for the gig went down.

Later we went into the House of Blues, passed the security. I loved it..I'm used to going to gigs and having my bag searched for drugs or a cheeky bottle of Vodka, or something along those lines....but this time, the security guy opened my bag and asked 'maaam, do you have any pepper spray in here'... I replied in my best English accent 'I'm sorry?'. To this the security guard asked...'Maam, Pepper spray, do you have any'...'why no', I exclaimed 'are you allowed that stuff here?' He smiled and moved me on, but it made me laugh to think that he didn't care if I had a AK47 packed away in there, as long as there was no pepper in a can'.

There were a couple of bands on before Thrice, who we had tickets to see, so we stood somewhere near the bar while we waited. Kev was getting annoyed with the whole, tipping a dollar every time you get a drink thing and the cost of drinking was adding up. We noticed that literally, and I mean literally, every bloke in the venue had a checked shirt on and I started wondering whether Thrice had started a new checked shirt cult that I hadn't been invited to. Kev went off to the toilet and some bloke comes up to me and says 'hey... I love your different style man'. I replied, 'what do you mean, different style?', he said 'no, it's just you look cool and I think everyone should be an individual..it looks cool'. I restrained myself from saying 'uh, well if you think everyone should be an individual then why are you wearing the uniformed checked shirt'. Anyway, needless to say, I was outraged by the fact that, even though this guy was trying his hardest to pay me a backhanded compliment, I was being considered as 'out of fashion'. Now, I've never been one to follow fashion and I've always prided myself on having my own style but this was different – I suddenly felt like the outcast at school who someone was feeling sorry for! It annoyed me more than anything and I wanted to shout from the rooftops that the dress I was wearing was from Japan where everyone was way cooler than anyone in that room. Thankfully, I couldn't get on the rooftops and the moment passed and Kev returned from the toilet.

At last Thrice came on to the stage and I despite not being able to see very well, I insited I didn't want to go further forward in case the crowd kicked off when the music started. I really needn't have worried as gigs in LA are not like gigs back home. The majority of the concert involved men swaying from side to side, it was horrendous! Thrice were OK but not like they were back home when I've seen them so we were disappointed and wished we had taken Bobby and Mark up on their Taco Tuesday invite.

Fiji time!

2009-11-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

Auckland tha noo Jimmy!

2009-11-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

Piha Piha Pi-ha-no, Pi-ha-no...

2009-11-22T19:09:00.000-08:00

Shipwrecked!

2009-11-22T19:04:00.000-08:00

It's been such a long time since we've updated this blog that it feels strange to be starting off by writing about our last few days in New Zealand while I'm sitting on a beach waiting to leave Fiji, but I will try my best to cast my mind back to over a week ago.

We left Rotarua and drove to Hobbiton and as I expected you couldn't see very much unless you paid to go on a guided tour. In fairness to the owners of the farm they were really milking the Lord of the Rings thing. They were attempting to charge about £30 to allow you to go to the middle of the farm where the film set is. That wouldn't have been that bad had the place still looked like it did when they made the film, but in actual fact, Hobbiton is now not much more than a few large holes in the hills covered by white bits of MDF. All the accessories that were used in the film to make this place look like a Hobbit Village have gone back with the film crew themselves. We decided it really wasn't worth the money to go and look at some holes in the ground and we drove on to our next destination.

Whangamata was our next port of call and there we found, as expected, a beautiful surfing beach. The town centre seemed lovely as well with loads of surf shops and bars, but there was just one odd thing and that was that on this Wednesday afternoon, everything was closed. It took us a long time to find out that we were there slightly out of season and so it seems no-one bothers to work unless there's a whole heap of tourists to cater for. We decided that we were going to spend the night at the side of a road here as it was a safe little town and it seemed that's that what everyone else was doing. We'd been determined to spend at least one night in the traditional backpacker way! But as it hit 5pm and we had nothing to do, no bar to go to, no power to watch a film on the laptop, no light to read a book and conversation ran out a long time ago, we decided to move on to the next big town in the hope that there would be more to do there.

So we drove to Thames in the rain and the fog through the mountains (it wasn't a nice drive) and we saw that it was a nice little old mining town, but again, there was nothing really happening, In the guide book it had said there was a hostel that had unpowered sites outside for hardly any money so we thought we'd check that out before deciding whether to stay at the side of the road or not here. The hostel, it turned out, only rented out it's sites in peak season and so we would have to go out of town to the only campsite there was (although I don't think that's strictly true, I think the owner of the hostel had a deal with the campsite we stayed at!). The hostel woman told me that it was illegal to camp at the site of the road there and we would get charged $80 if we tried. So, now it seemed we had no choice and it was getting dark so we went up to the campsite she had suggested. Along the way we got stopped at a road block where they were breathalising everyone so that was a bit exciting as we'd never been breathalysed before. It was a bit of a dump and totally overpriced but we parked up anyway, annoyed that we had even come to Thames. We spent the evening in the games room watching rubbish on TV, so it was a bit of a wasted evening. I think it's fair to say that we felt the last week in New Zealand was a bit of a waste of time. We'd seen all we wanted to see and every day cost us so much money that we began to really resent the place.

The next morning we quickly wandered through the town of Thames and then, having seen nothing that interested us, we drove on through Auckland and over to a secluded little beach town called Piha. Driving through Auckland was a shock to the system to be on roads with more than one lane, sometimes even three lanes! But before we knew it we were back on single track windy roads through the mountains to Piha. Piha is about half an hour away from anywhere and is a beautiful little beach. We parked in a lovely and really cheap campsite and went for a wander on the beach. It was really lovely until we began walking back. At the other side of the beach was a car park and a take away hut and all around it were kids. As we walked through them I realised they were all drinking and getting rowdy and I heard one shouting at another that he was going to 'kick his head in'. I thought they were just mates all messing around, but Kev had seen that it was a group of skin head kids who were arguing with a bunch of Mauri kids. We walked through and said to each other how horrible and intimidating it was to walk through them. Once we were a fair distance away we looked back and things had really kicked off there. The kids were fighting really badly and smacking each other with cricket bats – it was the most horrible thing I've ever seen. We hurriedly walked back to our campsite and there I decided I really didn't want to stay in this place anymore. This place was so tiny that it was the kind of village that don't have police, the community themselves do what they need. For example, when we arrived we read the information from the campsite and it said that if you hear a siren then it means that there has been a fire or an accident or something and it's a call for all the local volunteers to meet and sort it out. So, when we saw this fight it really dawned on me that we were a long way from any type of police and all of a sudden, I really didn't feel safe there even though we were now no-where near the fighting.

It took a long time, but Kev calmed me down and I agreed to stay in the campsite, but I wasn't going out of the campsite. It's funny because this is such a quiet, sleepy little place where nothing usually happens, so it was just really really bad luck that we saw that fight. I saw a police car go by and realised that the locals had called the nearest police and that made me feel a bit better. We went to the local shop and were chatting to the owner who told us that the school exams had just finished and all the kids from Auckland had come to Piha beach to get drunk. He said it happened every year but that they always leave by the end of the afternoon and no-one in Piha allows them to stay the night there. He assured me that Piha was an incredibly safe place to stay and that calmed me down a lot. He pointed us in the direction of the local members bar and so we headed there to have a drink on the balcony overlooking the beach (but a long way from the beach front, thank goodness!) and some really great food. It was a nice bar and at first the owner had been reluctant to let us in because he thought we might be from some hotel organisation who were clamping down on members bars who allow non members in. But we convinced him that we were not there to catch him out and he signed us in! By the evening I could tell that Piha was a lovely community where everyone knew each other and we did have a good night. Not sure I'd go there again though and by now I was so ready to leave New Zealand and still nothing had managed to change my mind – it's a nice place and I'm glad I've been, but I don't think I'll be going back in a hurry.

The next morning we drove to Auckland and dropped off our camper van. It was a sad moment but Kev took it hard and walked around in silence for most of the day with the key chain from the camper van round his neck (minus the van key). Honestly, you'd have thought Rehab was a person the amount he mourned the loss! We walked up to our hostel which was a huge place on the main street in Auckland centre. It was hard to get used to being in a really big city and there we saw homeless people and beggars and crowds and crowds of people which was something we had not seen for a month- it was a little overwhelming at first and we just wanted to get to the hostel and chill out. But the hostel was one like the one in Sydney – huge and full of really annoying travellers who are really just doing a typical like Spanish 18 to 30s holiday, but for a much longer time and in countries that are a bit further away! (Oh, man, I just suddenly realised that I couldn't go on a 18 to 30s holiday now, even if I wanted to, which I don't, so just as well!)

So anyway, we went for a wander to the Skytower, which isn't really that impressive at all, and then to the harbour, which is really lovely actually. Then we headed back to the hostel where we upgraded our room to an en-suite with a TV and where we chilled out with a take-away for the rest of the evening. It was nice to shut the door to the chaos of the 18-30s crowd although it was slightly annoying every time a voice came over the tanoy into our room to tell us that there were free drinks and the bar, or a call to join the Jeigermeister train, or some other load of rubbish that we really didn't want to go and do!

The next morning we got up really late because we figured the later we got up the shorter the day would be – we really were ready to leave New Zealand. We walked to the big park and then along to the harbour again and then we went to the skytower to watch the sky jumpers. I had considered doing the sky jump which a a base jump from the top of the sky tower, but when I saw people doing it it looked a bit tame. It lasts for like 11 seconds and no-one was screaming when they did it or anything. If people aren't screaming then I figured it's not worth doing!! I looked into the price just on the off chance that it was really cheap and then I'd do it, but was horrified to find out that it was about $200 or something like that, for an 11 second thrill that wouldn't even make you scream, I couldn't believe it and this just made me resent New Zealand even more. Honestly, that place has realised that they've been given the title of Adrenaline Capital and have milked it till it bleeds! Everything you want to do, everywhere you want to go, anything you want to see...it's get your wallet out time and everything is just a rip off – although there are a few exceptions – sky diving was cheap and sledging and kayaking was value for money – but that's it.

That evening we went to the cinema because Kev was really missing films and we watched 2012. It's a ridiculous film but easy to watch and fairly entertaining. There were many many moment where those who were about to die would ring their family and say goodbye and as you can imagine, I balled my eyes out to each of these moments, much to Kev's amusement. It passed the time and killed our last night in New Zealand.

Next morning we were up and out of that hostel in a flash. Straight to Starbucks for a pick me up and then onto the airport bus, woo hoo, we were heading to Fiji. The flight was quick and painless and we were both so glad to be moving on.

As soon as we got off the plane the heat hit us like a brick. It was back to that humid hotness that we'd had in South East Asia, but here the airport wasn't air conditioned and I didn't hold out much hope for the rest of the country being air conditioned either! As we waited for our bags it was boiling and I did begin to appreciate the pleasant weather we had had in the north island of NZ. Slight panic when the cash points at the airport wouldn't work, but this was soon sorted when our driver stopped at an ATM in the the town, so no problems there. Getting to our hostel was easy and we rang the free phone number at the airport and the minibus was already there waiting to take us to Smuggler's Cove.

Smuggler's Cove was cheap and so I was preparing myself for the worst, but when we got there our room was fine and air conditioned – basic but absolutely fine. The bar and the pool area downstairs were lovely and we spent the evening there. Kev watched the Scotland v Fiji rugby match on the big screen while I enjoyed the local entertainment, the Fire Dance. The Fire Dance was basically a load of very muscly, very tattooed, Fijian men in nothing more than little skirts dancing around, sometimes with fire, sometimes not. It was a sight that would have pleased the most demanding of hen parties!

The next morning was an early start again and after a basic breakfast we headed outside to meet our pick up service which was going to take us to paradise. The minibus was waiting and already on board was a couple of Polish guys who were really friendly with an awesome sense of humour and a British guy – James who was a law student from Devon, incredibly well spoken and one of those guys that oozed with confidence, but in a nice way! We set off on our way to the harbour and picked up Rodney and Britany, an American couple from Colorado. We also picked up another couple, but they didn't really speak so we're not sure who they were!! We arrived at the harbour at 9am and had to wait until 10am when the boat would leave. We took some shade in a cafe, but just as we were relaxing so we were summoned onto the boat for some reason.

(Sorry, just need to interrupt this bulletin to say that it is now 1.20pm on Sunday 22^nd November and while I am sitting on a beach in Fiji writing this, I am actually also just arriving in LA at this very moment – this time travel thing that is going to happen tonight is still pickling my head!!)

So we got on the boat and we sat there waiting for about an hour and a half. We were waiting for another couple that were due to arrive at 10, but they were really late so we just had to wait. There's one boat that goes to Waya island and one boat that leaves every day, so we just had to wait for them! It was really hot on the boat but it was a good chance to get to know some of the people we would be spending the next week with and we soon bonded with the gang.

Eventually the other couple arrived and we set off for the hour and a half journey into the Pacific Ocean to Waya Island and Octopus Bay Resort, part of the Yasawa group of islands. It was a bit of choppy ride but was fun and absolutely beautiful, passing by deserted islands, and over the crystal clear waters. The only down side was that having been told there was no toilet on board, of course my mind decided I needed to toilet right from the word go – typical!

As we approached the island so the staff all gathered on the beach for their daily welcoming song. We were told that when they finished singing, we would all have to shout a big 'Bula', which is 'hello'. Kev was cringing and I couldn't stop laughing, but over the next week we would come to love that welcoming song and the local customs.

We jumped out of the boat and into the water and then headed to the bar area to be welcomed onto the island. Walu is a huge island and over the hills there are 4 villages with around 200 people living in each. Me and Kev, I'm ashamed to say, didn't venture off the resort once and so we didn't actually see any of these local villages (apart from a long distance view from the boat). We had always booked this week in Fiji as a complete break from travelling and a time to completely relax and do nothing, and I can honestly say that for 5 days on the island, that's exactly what we did.

We collected the keys to our Beach front Bure and we went down to check out our new home. It was a traditional thatched cottage with an outdoor shower and a patio and a hammock under the shade of the trees in the garden. We didn't use the hammock much though to be honest because getting into it was like an act of contortion, first sitting, then reaching back with both arms and swinging your legs round to balance it – I fell out of it on more than one occassion! Our garden led onto the beach where we had our own private area and loungers along the water. There's a huge reef there and so it's a perfect place for snorkelling and so we snorkelled just about every day. The water was so clear and there were such amazing fish in there, it was great.

Once our bags had been delivered to our Bure, Bure 9, it was time for lunch. I loved the routine in this resort – every day you got up at 9 for breakfast, you waited to hear the blowing of the shell at 12.30 which signalled the beginning of lunch and then at 7.30 again, the shell siren would go and it was time to settle down for dinner. After dinner, the staff would tell you what activities were happening that night and the following day and you could chose to participate or not. Meals were served on large tables and so we got to meet so many people while we were there and it was nice to head over to lunch and see people that you knew. I'd missed seeing people that I knew.

It wasn't long before we were settling into 'Fiji Time' which is basically a time where nothing gets done! There was a few new Bure's being built on the island but every day me and Kev laughed at the fact that the builders never appear to be doing anything but sitting around – it's so hot here though that I can see why. But it's not an uncomfortable heat on the islands because there's such a breeze.

We'd been told to bring snacks with us to the island because some reviews of Octopus said that the food was horrible. But that was just a lie. The food there was amazing and as everything was all inclusive it was nice to not have to worry about paying for things. We ate a lot of Walu which is the local fish and that is delicious – I'm going to keep my eye out for it at home but I'm not sure if it is sold back home. Every day the meals were amazing, from the omelettes at lunch to the buffets or steaks for dinner – just awesome – ah, my mouth is watering just thinking about it!

The days were the same every day, breakfast, snorkel/ read book, lunch, snorkel, dinner, beer. I thought I would get bored but I loved the routine (routine fits in with my organised personality) and I loved having time to just sit and read and to not have to go and look at things or experience things – I could just sit – forced relaxation and I loved it. Kev was a bit bored of sitting and doing nothing by the end but he still enjoyed it all the same. Every day there were activities on offer but we chose not to do any of them and by the end of the week we couldn't believe we had to go back to doing things as wed got so lethargic.

Each evening was different however and the first night was our welcoming ceremony where the elders of the village welcome you to their island. Basically, Waya island is still a very traditional island, where the villagers still speak Fijian (English is the first language on the mainland) and the owner of the resort (a guy from New Zealand) had to work miracles to get the elders to agree to have the resort there in the first place. The resort provides a lot of money for a boarding school on the island so the children benefit and as far as we could work out, that's why the elders agreed to let the resort go ahead. We were so glad we chose to stay at Octopus because we met a lot of people who were island hopping during their time in Fiji and without fail, every single on said Octopus was by far the nicest resort.

So the welcoming ceremony was a little scary. You sit on a mat with the elders of the village and they mix together a huge bowl of Kava, which is the local drink. I had read before we came that Kava was hallucinogenic and I was not going to have any of that stuff. It freaked me out slightly that I was an hour and a half away from any medical facilities anyway and I wasn't about to try hallucinogenic stuff far out in the Pacific Ocean. I'd gone my whole life avoiding any sort of peer pressure when it came to drugs and I was not about to give in now!! So as we sat on the mat I was glaring at Kevin and trying to convey that I was not happy about this, not happy at all.

It all turned out fine in the end though as I found out that the Kava at the welcoming ceremony is a type of tourist Kava that isn't hallucinogenic after all – in fact, it doesn't do anything at all except taste really bad and it makes your tongue go numb for about a minute. So the elders play a song and then do some chanting and then we all clap a few times and then a cup of Kava is passed to each person in turn. Even though I knew we weren't drinking the real stuff, ever cautious me still asked the elder to tip away half of my cup full, I was taking no chances! And I point blankly refused to drink the second, which probably offended them in all sorts of cultural ways, but I felt that I had done my bit already by sipping the first cup. Kava looks like muddy water and tastes pretty much the same, so it's not something I'd recommend. I didn't drink any alcohol that night as I was paranoid that mixing alcohol and this tourist kava would do me some damage (it really was just mud and water to be honest and so I was being totally ridiculous, but you can never be too careful).

That night was crab racing night and after dinner we were all told to go over to the crab master and pick our crabs. I was excited about this sport until I realised that pick your crab literally meant pick up your crab! Foolishly I had burdened Kev with my bottle of water and his beer so it was down to me to pick up the little nipping bugs. On the floor were tens of little hermit crabs, poor little things, and surrounding them were all of us tourists trying to sus out which one had the longest legs, or which one had the lightest shell, or which one was a suppressed Olympic gold medallist! I picked my two based on which ones looked like they had the smallest nippers! I picked up my guys by the shell and hurried over to the entry table, getting faster with every nip of my fingers. I pushed in the queue and dropped my crabs on the table as the crab master painted a tipex number on their back (they do crab racing night twice a week at Octopus, so it's not unusual to see hermit crabs with numbers on their backs strolling across the beach). The crabs were taken to the centre of a circle in the sand and we all gathered round as they raced to the outer edge of the circle. My crabs got through to the final, but alas, they were pipped at the post by a tiny little thing who had defied all odds – using his tiny legs to out race his larger oppenents, who'd have thought it eh!

It had been a tiring day and so we had an early night that night. It was hard to get used to sleeping next to the sea, which was surprisingly loud, and with no air conditioning.

The next night was International Volleyball night where they encouraged the tourists to take on the locals on the volleyball court. Having watched the locals play there was no point in us joining in, so we spent the evening chatting to various people. It was a good night and we ended up staying up pretty late.

The night after that was games night and the night after that was back to crab racing. That afternoon, me and Kev had found a couple of crabs by our Bure and we were convinced they wanted to run for us. We made them a sandy little home in an old plastic bottle and took them to dinner with us that night. When the crab master gave us number 29 and 30 (our ages) I was convinced these guys were going to win – but number 29 (Krabi to us) was knocked out in the semi final and number 30 (Turtle to us), well, I didn't even see him in the race, in fact, I didn't see him again until the next morning when I saw him walking along the beach – what are the chances of that, I think he must have got lost on the track.

After crab racing we decided to play some volleyball. It was really good fun, although the bruises on my arms have yet to go down – it's a tough ball. Playing volleyball was a good way to meet people and we got chatting to a couple from Scotland, the guy was from Glasgow but they both now lived in Edinburgh, just round the corner from where we used to live. They were leaving the next day but they're going to be on our flight to LA tonight. We also met the Doctor on the island. Jimmy was from Texas and his girlfriend was an investment banker called Cathy! So we got chatting to Jimmy first who turned out to like alcohol a lot! We ended up going back to Jimmy and Cathy's place where they had a free bar. Basically, these guys had hired a place called Poppy's lodge which was just next to the bar and on the beach. It was a three bedroom villa with air conditioning, free bar to the value of $2000 FJD (about £700), satellite TV, everything – it was luxury. They had hired the lot but there was only those two staying there so they invited us to stay in one of the spare rooms for the night. Kev refused to believe they had the whole place to themselves and so wasn't sure about using the spare room, but I insisted! Jimmy and Cathy were really nice guys and now I want to go to Texas even more when we get to the states.

The night after that was our last night and it was Friday night, Fiji night. Every Friday, the villagers come to Octopus to perform a few traditional dances for us and to put on a huge Fijian buffet dinner. The dances they put on were really awesome and their singing was amazing. We found it funny because when the owner announced the dances he said that these guys are not professionals, just people who are really proud of their culture and that they're the plumbers, the builders, the waiters.....etc.... it made us laugh to think of tradespeople in the UK getting up in a grass skirt and singing and dancing, it just wouldn't happen! We cringed a bit when we realised we had to participate in a few dances, but it turned out to just be a kind of conga thing around the pool which wasn't too cringe-worthy. Then we all had to stand around the pool where each of the local villagers came round and shook each of our hands and said thank you. The shaking of hands and thanking went on for ages, there were a lot of villagers, and I had to fight to hold back the laughter because in my head it was the most surreal thing. As each villager shook my hand and said thank you, I would say thank you, but at the same time I could hear Kev on one side of me repeatedly saying thank you and Cathy on the other side of me saying thank you and it just seemed like a bonkers situation to be in. but in all seriousness, it was really touching actually and it was really good to meet the locals properly.

We sat down for our Fijian dinner and we had a great table for the last meal. Me, Kev, Cathy, Jimmy, Rodney and Britany (our original gang members and probably the people we got to know best during our time there, really really nice couple) and another couple who had just arrived who were from the UK.

The food was absolutely amazing, although we weren't too sure about the huge fish head that appeared in the middle of it all. The fish was a Miti fish and it had huge teeth and eyes that stared up at us. Me and Cathy were the first to get in there and dig out a bit of the meat, but even for a fish lover like me, this was a bit too fishy. I don't know if it was the fact that the eyes and the teeth were looking at me as I ate it's body, but no, we didn't like that fish.

After dinner the locals all sat around their Kava bowls and drank, lots.... the tourists were welcome to join them but this time it wasn't 'tourist Kava', but the real stuff. We gave it a miss and stayed at our table chatting, although the British couple headed over. Later we saw everyone slumped around the Kava bowls, smiling and looking a bit spaced out! We met a great couple from San Fran called Nate and Janice and Janice had given about 20 cups of Kava a try - she giggled a lot!

We didn't stay up too late that night, I think me, Kev, Jimmy and Cathy had outdone ourselves the night before – although poor Rodney was gutted he hadn't stayed up with us the night before and he was ready to party!

The last morning we went for one last snorkel and the water was perfectly clear so it was a great day for it. I was really enjoying it until I saw one of those huge Miti fish that we had eaten last night – I saw the size on it's teeth again and was paranoid that he knew I had eaten his friend the night before, so I headed in to the shallower water. There I saw a lovely Picasso fish and reached out to it (not to touch it you understand, just to reach out for some weird reason), anyway, I don't think he liked that and he darted straight for my face. That freaked me out and even though the fish was the size of a Captain Birdseye Fishfinger I didn't like seeing something coming straight for me. I swiftly turned around and then felt it bashing away at my flippers. I knew it was time to leave and I swam to shore. Kev came into shore and told me that the fish had probably laid some eggs near where I was swimming and that I just needed to avoid that bit of the reef. So we decided to go back out, but then every time I saw a Picasso fish I got a bit scared and Kev said that I kind of ruined the relaxing snorkel because all he could hear was me screaming underwater whenever a fish came anywhere near me. I now go back to my original view that fish are for eating and not for swimming with.

After lunch the boat arrived and we were called to board. It was sad to say goodbye and if there had been a hospital for emergencies on that island, I think I could have stayed there forever. The boat trip back was super choppy and Rodney managed to get totally soaked as the waves came over the boat and landed directly on him every time. It was good fun though and I didn't get sea sick, woo hoo! At the harbour our mini bus picked us up and dropped us back at Smuggler's Cove. Smuggler's Cove had been lovely on the first night, but now, compared to Octopus, it didn't seem quite as lovely! We went down to the bar for a short while and then got an early night.

This morning we had to check out by 10am but were able to leave our bags in the luggage room and have been able to sit in the shade by the beach and the swimming pool for the day. The beach here is pretty horrible and the sea isn't even clear so it's not that nice. It's cheap here too and there are a lot of Brits Abroad type people staying here for their whole holiday – it's a good place to come just for one night while you're waiting to get to an island, but unless you want to spend your time in Fiji in horrible water, on a dirty looking beach, surrounded by red raw tourists oiling themselves up and drinking cocktails then I would avoid this place for the long term stays.

We'll be heading to the airport about 6pm and there we should meet up with the Scottish guys and Jimmy and Cathy who are also on our flight to LA. They're getting a helicopter out of Octopus today and going straight to the airport, but we're looking forward to seeing them at the airport – it's so nice to see people you know.

So for now it's over and out from Fiji. Apologies for this blog not being too entertaining, I don't think I'm on form today and we've not done much over the last week or so to be entertaining about. I promise my next instalment will be more exciting. We get on our flight at 11pm tonight and arrive in LA at 1pm this afternoon (so as I say, I'm already there!).

And in fact I am already there because I didn't get round to uploading that blog while I was in Fiji afterall. As soon as I had finished writing the above, the lovely Russ and Carole from York (who we had met on Octopus Resort) turned up in the Smuggler's Cove beer garden. We ended up spending the afternoon chatting with them before getting a taxi to the airport and dropping Russ and Carole off at their hotel along the way. The airport was rammed and despite us turning up 4 hours before our flight we had to stand in a massive long queue. Then at 11 O'Clock we set off and the next 10 hours were pretty horrible. The guy infront of me was so big that when he leaned back in this chair infront of me it almost crushed me. Then the food came and when I put my drink of my tray, because the beast infront was making my tray slope down, my drink fell off into my lap so I spent the next ten hours in soggy trousers feeling like I'd wet myself! The movies played automatically so by the time we'd finished our meal we'd missed the start of the film and the plane landed before I got to see the end too so I only saw half of GI Joes (that was the best of a seriously bad bunch of film choices) and to top it all, it was probably the most turbulent flight I've ever been on! We were glad to get off, but had been warned about how bad LA airport was. Those warnings were true and it was the most choatic airport arrivals area we've ever seen. We got a shuttle bus to the hire car place and there the lady told us there was going to be a problem because I'd put Kev down as the main driver yet I was using my card to pay for it. She told me I needed to remember that ...'In America, nothing is transferable! Blah blah blah....' I really couldn't work out what the big deal was, but it got sorted and at first I thought the lady behind the counter was being rude when she said 'You're really starting to annoy me!', but then I realised that's their odd little sense of humour here. It turned out the lady behind the counter was actually really nice and gave us an upgraded car anyway!

Kev had his first experience driving on the other side of the road on a 6 lane freeway through the centre of LA which was trial by fire, but he did good and we made it to our hotel. The hotel is in Santa Monica and is pretty nice actually and it's so great to have a huge TV again with more than 3 channels. We popped out to try and find a Wallmart as we need to buy a Sat Nav but by the time we found the Walmart it was getting dark and I didn't want to get out of the car – America looks scary at night. So we drove back to the hotel, picked up a Wendy's take away and now we're going to watch TV all night and recover from what has been the longest Sunday 22^nd November ever!

The lap top is now fixed and we're hoping to have free wi fi in a lot of places in America so hopefully we'll get to skype you all soon.

xxx

In Luge

2009-11-10T01:57:00.000-08:00

Thermal Wonderland

2009-11-10T01:37:00.001-08:00

Huka Falls

2009-11-10T01:33:00.000-08:00

Sledging Your Bets!

2009-11-10T01:21:00.000-08:00

Kev woke up the morning after the Tongariro crossing with no aching bones, no sore feet, no nothing!! So there went my second lazy day by the pool!! Deep down I was thinking, surely he's going to be in pain after that marathon and he's going to want to stay in Taupo another night just chilling by the pool – but no! So before I knew it we were off! We packed up the van and drove to Huka Falls for a quick sight seeing stop. They were actually way more impressive than I thought they were going to be. I remember when I went to Niagra Falls in Canada, I thought to myself, hmm, it's nice, but it's just a whole heap of water falling off a cliff. So, you can imagine that I wasn't holding out too much hope for New Zealand's Huka Falls. But I was wrong. Huka Falls are awesome. They're not high like Niagra, but the amount of water that is squishing itself through the small valley is amazing and I couldn't help but be in awe of it, I could have gazed at it for hours to be honest! The power of the water is so obvious and the turquoise blue water gets transformed into a white froth as it lands in the machine machine like pit at the bottom. It really makes you appreciate the power of the water there, much more than when I was in Canada to be honest – sounds silly, I know!

After Huka Falls we went to Craters of the Moon, on the outskirts of Taupo. It was cheap to get in and it was basically a wooden path around a thermal area. There were strict warning to keep on the path in case you burnt your feet. We wandered around the steaming pit of craters and it was really fascinating ,but the weather was getting warmer and being surrounded by all that steam was making me too hot for my liking. I kept saying to Kev, 'are you're feet boiling', because mine were and it was only afterwards that I realised I was burning the back of my legs as we walked round as I was wearing a skirt and the stupid natural thermal heat from the ground was taking it's vengeance out on my poor little milk bottle legs! It was OK though, because as soon as we were back in the van I could see the red rash appearing on my legs and I caught it in time, chucked on some trousers and a whole ton of Sudacrem (thanks for the tip Matthew about bring that with us, turns out we didn't need it for the chaffing as you had suggested, but came in just as handy for burns – good times!)

Back in the van and we were heading to Rotarua but we needed to decide which of the many thermal parks to stop off at along the way – there's so many to chose from on the way to Rotarua and various people had given us their tips on which were the best. Thankfully, we stopped at Orekui Korako (now that is totally the wrong spelling but I know the place begins with an O and then a K and I can't be bothered to dig the map out to tell you the right spelling!!) and pulled up in the car park only to see that it cost a fortune and you had to get a ferry across to this 'hidden wonderland' which Lonely Planet had supposedly described as like the best place ever! Well, we'd learn along our travels that you can't trust a Lonely Planet recommendation as they love everything (I suspect they're on commission). So we decided to check out the postcards in the gift shop to make our decision whether it was worth paying the money to get the ferry across to the hidden valley. All the postcards showed the view that we could see from the gift shop anyway and a few other pics which didn't look too dissimilar to Craters of the Moon. So we decided to give this one a miss and we headed on down to Thermal Wonderland.

And we totally chose the best one to go to. Thermal Wonderland stinks, but is really worth the reasonable price they charge (cheaper than most of the others and all the locals agree it's the best by far – or fart – ha ha, that's a Rosy joke, because that's how it smells, ha, I've made myself laugh now!!) So anyway, sorry, thermal wonderland has massive clouds of sulphurous gases that engulf you and huge pools of either mud or pea green soup coloured lava. There's a huge lake in the middle where the water is bubbling at like 'I dread to think how hot that is' degrees and the gasses blowing off it (ha, blowing off!! sorry I didn't even plan that, ha– you should see the photos we took if you want to realise how much of a child I am) are like bright orange. So yeah, it's a cool place but we raced around because the smell was pretty overpowering.

Back in the van and we were off on the road to Rotarua, which I must add smells real bad, not the van, but Rotarua, although the van's starting to get a bit funky now after 3 weeks too! Anyhoo! So we arrived at the Rotarua information centre and for the first time the lady behind the desk admitted that even though we're not meant to we could get away with just camping out for free in a car park somewhere. I still wasn't keen on parking up on the side of the road, but then she directed us to a cheap backpackers hostel which has a camping area. It turned out to be the cheapest and best place we've stayed the whole trip. We get to use all the youth hostel facilities for hardly any money – needless to say we've taken advantage and stayed here three nights!

The following morning we had a much needed lie in. I was feeling like I had a cold – I've honestly never had so many colds as while I've been away travelling! So I needed a lie in and a day to chill out. We took a drive to the Agroadventures centre, which is basically just a farm that thought to itself 'hang on a minute, New Zealand is doing pretty well out of tourism and here we are just milking a few cows and sheering a few sheep – let's milk a few tourists instead and sheer their wallets by building some rubbish rides and call it Extreeeeme dude!'. We weren't totally blown, ha, sorry, away by their adrenaline attempts at rides, although it was pretty good to watch the original Zorbs – the big inflatable hamster wheels that you get into and then roll down a hill, arriving at the bottom 2 seconds later and about 50 bucks poorer! Didn't bother having a go because if money was endless then yeah you'd do all these things, but adrenaline junkies like me can get pretty poor pretty quickly here unless you reign yourself in once in a while and sometimes you've just got to think, hmm, someone here is ripping you off!

We went back into the centre of Rotarua for a wander round, but it smells bad here of sulphur, in fact the park on the way to town is just a big puddle of bubbling mud, not dissimilar to the bog of eternal stench in David Bowie's Labyrinth. And the town centre is pretty rubbish to be honest. One thing we've noticed for sure here is that crime is an issue in the north island, where in the south you begin thinking you're living in Heartbeat where there's one police man for like the whole island. You didn't even have to think about locking the van door, or leaving your valuables in the car, let alone wandering around at night – it's totally safe in the south. But here in the north, you suddenly see a lot of police and the menacing looking teenagers make it obvious that it's not as safe here as you'd like and the constant reminders to 'lock it or lose it' are a stark warning to anyone thinking the north is like the south. The people in the north aren't as friendly here, but probably because in the south it seems literally everyone works in tourism, it seems that that's all there is there (sorry, that's probably really offensive to anyone from there), so it seems that they all really like tourists, but in the north, there's a few that work in tourism and then there's the rest who just have normal jobs so not everyone here welcomes you because not everyone here's job depends on you!

So yet another early night and we had to be up early this morning for White Water River Sledging. Now, I had been really surprised when Kev said we should do this because I was thinking, Kev hates these kind of things. It turns out Kev really didn't want to do this but he knew I'd totally regretted not doing it when I had the chance in Queenstown and he didn't want me missing out again so he pretended he was up for having a go!! Bless him!! I would have done it on my own, but he said he wanted to challenge himself anyway!! We arrived at the White Water Rafting place and while some of the group went off to do the rafting, me, Kev and three other guys went off to get wetsuited up and to be introduced to our boards.

Our boards were literally sledges that we were told to never let go of because we were about to get into grade 3 rapids and these boards would provide 70% of our buoyancy. I knew people died doing White Water Rafting which is why we'd chosen not to do that, and I thought the sledging was the safer option. When I joked with our guide that Sledging isn't really that hard, is it? I was disappointed to see his face turn very stark as he replied 'people die doing all these sports on white water!', this was not what I wanted to hear and Mum, you'll be glad to hear I survived and won't be doing it again, so breath a sigh of relief!!
Without doubt, it turned out this was more dangerous than me jumping out of the sky! The first part was the scariest for me as we were told to take a flying leap into the river. I knew I was in for trouble when 1) I couldn't even pick up my sledge to carry it to the river, and 2) I could barely bring myself to take this flying leap into the water. We did jump in though and we steered ourselves into the first Eddy at the side of the river where we could catch our breath for a second. There Kev decided he didn't want to do any more, but the guides weren't having any of that – they told him 'he was going to do this' and that was that, but he was earmarked as one of the ones to keep an eye on. I, on the other hand was still feeling pretty excited but I still had some learning to do. We all had to practice the essential flips that we would need to do if our sledge filled up with water. I struggled to do my practice flip and wasn't too happy when Andy, our guide, said, 'hmm, yeah you're going to struggle because you're vertically challenged' – turned out, the sledge was bigger than my body!! So that we me earmarked as another one to keep an eye on – good luck to the other three guys because our two guides were now assigned to me and Kev and they were out there on their own!!

So we spent the next 45 mins sledging down some rapids and it was great fun (although I don't think Kev would agree). I was just disappointed that my size meant I couldn't really do any of it on my own. I went down one rapid on my own and ended up under water with my board on top of me thinking 'hmmm, somehow I've got to lift this thing out of the water and away from myself, when I couldn't even lift it on dry land....this could be a problem', but survival is a funny thing and somehow I managed to do it. Kev said I was under the water for like a couple of seconds, but to me it felt like ages. It was awesome fun though. We got out just before the river turned into a grade 6 waterfall which all of us were petrified of accidentally drifting down.

A few bruised arms and elbows later and we were on dry land and Kev was able to release every muscle in his body from the constantly tensed position that he had spent the last hour in (and the last night he later admitted to me as he had been silently bricking it since the day before!!). Kev was in more pain from that work out that from his epic trek across the wilderness in Taupo – horses for courses as they say, there's no way I could have done that trek, but I enjoyed the white water.... never again though. Our guide kept saying Mauri prayers to the river as we went down and at the end I was very thankful to still have my life and I won't be taking that chance again in a hurry).

We came back to the campsite and had a well deserved beer before heading to the Skyline of Rotarua. Basically, the Skyline is a gondola ride up a huge mountain which gives you amazing views of the lake here. I didn't really want to do the gondola ride, but I did want to do the luge ride at the top and you can't have one without the other. So we got in the gondola and headed up the slope. At the top we got in our little three wheel sledge thing (you'd have thought we'd have had enough of sledges, but this one had brakes, so we liked it!) Then we shot down the mountain side, Kev much faster than me, along the slalom style track. First we took the obligatory practice scenic route and at the bottom we got on the ski lift back up to the top – wasn't keen on the ski lift at first as I wasn't too comfortable being about 50m above the ground on nothing more than a high tech basket on a rope, but I got used to it.

Next luge ride we took the intermediate course as we were getting a bit cocky and were in need of our next adrenaline fix. This trip was over too soon and so the next ride down we did the scenic one, but a bit faster – I think Kev was trying to race me at one point but I was having none of that, hand constantly on the break thinking to myself, 'I've only got short sleeves on, oohhh, if I come off this, that is going to hurt!!'. I think I have a misplaced sense of danger as I loved going down rapids on a river that many people have died on on nothing more than a bit of plastic, but put me on a toboggan which is suitable for 8-year-old children and ohhh, my mind suddenly recognises danger – bonkers.

By the end of all that we were exhausted so we headed to the supermarket to pick up dinner – a huge bag of massive NZ live mussels which I just cooked successfully all by myself and hopefully will not kill me by the morning! Kev didn't eat any so he shall report in my food poisoned absence if need be!! Met some lovely guys from Switzerland who will be camping around the world for 2 years – mad as hatters! Good stories they had to tell though, but no, three more nights in the van is enough for me.

So while not too much to tell on this blog though I'd better get up to date as we're not sure when we'll have email again, probably not until Auckland on Friday. Heading off to Hobbiton tomorrow (hmmm, I've never even managed to stay awake through a whole Lord of the Rings film, so not sure how I'll get on looking round the film set!!) and then onto a beautiful beach called Whangamata for a couple of nights. Dropping the van off on Friday and then Staying in a real bed in a hostel in Auckland for two nights – a real bed, imagine that!!

Looking forward to hearing from you all soon. Big kisses xxxxx

Rosy Sledging

2009-11-09T16:42:00.000-08:00

White Water Sledginding Part Deux

2009-11-09T16:36:00.001-08:00

White Water Sledging

2009-11-09T16:31:00.001-08:00

Kev's Tongariro Alpine Crossing

2009-11-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

Napier: The Art Deco City

2009-11-08T16:08:00.000-08:00

Ferries, Wellys and Art Deco

2009-11-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

The beginning of the Napier Photos

Welsh bar in Wellington

The ferry to the North Island

Last night in the South

No turning back?...

2009-11-06T22:54:00.001-08:00

Whammy!

2009-11-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

Hia!!

2009-11-06T22:48:00.001-08:00

Hey Everyone! Come see how good I look!!

2009-11-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

Sunday night I didn't sleep very well, having numerous dreams about falling out of the sky, and so it wasn't a problem getting up early on Monday and heading to the airport. There I was shown a DVD about what was going to happen that morning as I prepared to do my skydive. It was a really cloudy day and the skydive staff advised us to go off and get some breakfast and come back in an hour to wait for the cloud to clear. I really just wanted to get it over with, but meeting all the staff at the airport had made me feel pretty excited about the jump so what harm would another hours wait do. We had our breakfast and headed back, only to be told that the cloud cover wasn't clearing and we'd need to come back at 2pm. That was 4 hours away!!

We went back into Motueka town and got some housekeeping done, got the waterproof camera shots of dolphin swimming developed, uploaded some stuff to the blog etc..., but about half 12 it got to the stage where we had nothing to do but sit and think about what I was about to do. The waiting was by far the worst bit. I just wanted to do it, land safely on the ground and be thankful that I was still alive!

At half one we headed back to the airport and there it was all systems go. I watched as some other fools got into a plane, headed up to the sky out of sight, and then came floating back down to earth on a bit of canvas. Then it was my turn. Before I knew it I was being suited up and introduced to the man I would entrust with my life. Once the harness was attached, my designated cameraman summoned me out of the hanger to ask me for a few last words before I got into the plane. I had so many things in my head that me and Kev had joked about the night before – the things I was meant to say on camera to make me look really cool – things like: 'hey everyone, come and see how good I look!' (lines from my favourite film in case you're wondering why I'm suddenly so uncharacteristically vain!). But all those things went out of my head and when my cameraman asked me if I had a message for my family back in Wales, all I could think to say was something along the lines of: 'tell them I love them if I don't make it down alive!!'.

Next we were quickly shoved in a tiny tiny plane before we even had time to think twice (probably just as well). I went in last, which I instantly knew meant I was jumping first (again, probably just as well). Amazingly, I wasn't nervous, just excited, although I did repeatedly ask every single member of staff whether it was possible to breath while you were falling out of the sky! Inside the tiny plane another two girls were squished up between the legs of their tandem jumpers and in front of them were two cameramen. Then there was me, squished between the legs of my jumper, Mike. As the door closed and we waved the ground goodbye, the only thing I could think was 'hurry up and get me up there so I can jump out of this tiny space', for a claustrophobic person, the tiny plane was the worst bit! I had a good position, right by the big glass door and so I could see everything as we shot up into the sky – the mountains, the beaches, everything. There was a moment when Mike pointed to his watch thing and told me we were at 5000ft and there was a long way to go. I looked out the window and thought, blinking heck, that is a long way up, I've got to jump out of here – for a split second I got nervous but I just blocked that out of my head and enjoyed the view. The staff were great anyway as they just kept talking to keep you calm. I think Mike ran out of things to say at one point and started talking about liking mud cake. I was thinking, yeah, that's great, but what has liking mud cake got to do with the fact that whether I live or die is completely in your hands right now!! I really wanted him to stop sounding like a totally rad hippy and to start sounding like a sensible professional who knew exactly what he was doing – but no, him and his mate just proceeded to make crazy hand signals at each other while shouting 'totally rad man' and 'extreeeeeme dude!'.

I could feel Mike beginning to snap various clips onto me which meant he was securing himself to my harness. He asked me to put my hat on and then told me that from that point on, wherever I go, he goes. What was more worrying for me was that wherever he goes, I go – no turning back now. I put on my goggles which immediately steamed up, but Mike assured me that as soon as the door opened my goggles would clear in a second. And with that everything started to happen pretty quickly. The door snapped open, my goggles cleared and my cameraman climbed out to the side of the plane. Then Mike started shifting me towards the door and before I knew it I was hanging over the edge of the plane. Mike had told me that to get into starting position I would need to curl my legs up under the plane and put my head right back. I had expected that to mean that I would be sitting on the edge of the plane with my legs under it – but no, what that means is, you're hanging out of the plane with your legs back while Mike sits comfortably on the edge – at that moment in time I was entrusting my life to some sturdy straps and a harness. Everything happened so quickly and Mike asked me if I was good to go, I nodded, time for one pose for the camera and then it was brace brace brace position as Mike flung us out of the plane. For a few seconds your just spinning around in the sky and you've no idea what's going on, it's like your mind is in overload and then you catch a glimpse of your cameraman and you're eyes can begin to focus. Thumbs up for the camera and then I realised we were hurtling towards the ground at 120mph from 13000ft. It was awesome and yes I could breath, although I didn't open my mouth once in case the force of the wind stopped my ability to breath!! I had also been told that this was a good way of preventing that wobbly mouth and saliva all over your face look that some people get on their DVD - I really didn't want that! So while other people scream and yell in their DVD's, I'm just falling with a devils horn pose in silence. Again, I was meant to be screaming 'Scotchy scotch, scotch, down into my belly!' or 'power, power, power!', but none of that made it on the DVD!

Just as I was beginning to think, OK, I've had enough of this now, we've been free-falling for a pretty long time (50 seconds in fact), Mike tapped me on the shoulders and the parachute opened. We shot back upwards into the air with a jolt and my cameraman shot straight down to earth to get there in time to catch me landing. Once the parachute had opened everything slowed down and it felt like we had actually stopped moving and we were in fact just suspended in mid air. It was all very peaceful and fr the next five minutes or so me and Mike made small talk about work and the like while we floated down. I had a go at steering and with every turn my stomach churned. I liked the feeling but did it a little too much, to the point where I made myself pretty motion sick and Mike had to take over control. We had a really good landing, no undignified falling on the floor, just a graceful walk onto land. It was great and I would totally do it again. It's just a shame it's over so quickly, but it's really not scary – there's no time to get scared!

Once I'd collected my photos and DVD (and free T-shirt) we headed back to the internet cafe to watch the DVD. It's pretty funny and I'm looking forward to showing you guys when we get back. Then it was time to drive towards Picton. It was the windiest road we've ever driven along but it didn't take too long and we arrived at a camp-site just outside of Picton, in a beautiful bay pretty early, The weather was amazing now and this was the perfect place to end the day. We sat by our van, on the shoreline, with a cold beer and fed the ducks – it was great.

The next morning, after we had fed our friends the ducks, we had to leave and drove to Picton itself where we were to get the ferry across to the north island. Picton doesn't really have much to offer other than the ferry but we had time for a quick coffee and a look around the shops. We checked in to get on the ferry and sat and waited until we could board and eventually we drove on to the ferry. We had gone with Blue bridge because our van rental place had a deal which meant we could get through for the price of a car rather than a camper van. Unfortunately, Blue bridge, it appears. Also have a deal with every farmer in New Zealand and so we had to share our journey to the north island with two huge truck loads of sheep and cows – all crammed into tiny little cages in the vans and all smelling really really bad!! The smell meant that you couldn't really venture outside while you were on this hip – although Kev did. I was confined to inside, which was pretty bleak too. The Blue Bridge ferries are ex-freighters so they're pretty basic inside. I can't say it was the most pleasurable cruise across the sea I've ever done (even though it's the only cruise across the sea I've ever done) and I suspect Blue Bridge is the cheaper option for everyone anyway because the class of people we shared the trip with were far below my desired standards shall we say! 4 hours later I was glad to get off that boat.

As the ferry approached Wellington we could already see why everyone says the north island is like a different country to the south. In the Wellington skyline we saw buildings of more than one two storeys high for the first time in two weeks – on the south island, you're lucky if you see anything other than a bungalow! Once we drove off the ferry, the road systems immediately confused us, well confused me, the navigator, anyway. In the south island it was impossible to get lost – there was mainly one road and everything was along that road, with a few exceptions. Here we were in a normal city and I managed to get us lost pretty quickly. Despite a few heated words between Kevin and myself we eventually found our way onto the highway and drove out to the camp-site. Unfortunately, an inevitability of being back in a normal size city, all the camp-sites were on the outskirts of town. It didn't matter too much that night as by the time we got to the camp-site we were pretty tired and had a quiet night.

The next morning we had a long lie and then caught the bus into Wellington centre. They say this is one of the windiest cities on earth and that is no lie. The wind actually tires you out here because it's like being constantly rocked by a hurricane and not in a good 'Scorpions' kind of way. Seriously though, it;s unbelievable how much you get blown around here. We got off the bus just by the parliament buildings and stopped pretty much just long enough to take a photos before we were blown further down into the town centre. We stopped off for a really good lunch and then headed off to find The Welsh Pub. When we found it, as I should have expected, it looked like a total dive and it was closed. So we spent the afternoon wandering around Wellington, getting a little bit bored if we're honest. It's a nice city, don;t get me wrong, but there's not that much going on here that you can't get back home. Eventually we found the Welsh Bar to be open and we went inside. To our surprise, inside was really nice, although it did smell exactly like Metros (must be a Welsh smell!) and we had a few drinks and played a bit of pool before meeting my friend Hannah, who I used to work with in Cardiff and who now lives here in Wellington. We had a drink with her but then had to leave to catch our bus back to the camp-site.

The next morning we had to leave Wellington, but although we had liked it there, we weren't sad to go. We got straight back onto the highway and headed towards Napier. It was a long drive and a windy and windy (two different words!) one. About 5 hours later we arrived in Napier, the Art Deco City. WE parked up and walked into town which was pretty impressive although not what I had expected. I had expected a town tat was lost in time, where everyone still lives in Art Deco style. That's not true though and instead it's just a normal town where all the buildings in the centre are from the Art Deco style as they were built in the 1930s. I think it's meant to be the best example of an Art Deco town in the world, I think. Basically the town was destroyed by an earthquake and so in the 1930s the centre got completely rebuilt in a beautiful Art Deco style. We had a bit of a wander around and then went back to the camp-site to chill out. There was an old person's party going on in a dinning hall just by our van so the OAPs kept us up later than we had wanted (think we must be getting old!) but we still managed to get a relatively early night.

The next morning we got up and went on our own self0guided tour of Napier. We had bought the little brochure and so we parked up at the start and worked our way around the city. It was interesting but by the end of the two hour tour we were getting a little tired of Art Deco. Sarita would have loved it more I'm sure!

We got back in the van and it was time to drive to Lake Taupo. This was a much shorter and much nicer drive and we arrived by later afternoon. It's a nice place in Taupo and the lake is massive, but we had a big dilemma on our hands. Kev wanted to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing Trek which is an 8 hour minimum hike across some amazing scenery and rising to up to 1900 feet above sea level. It's a serious expedition for which you need to be thoroughly prepared as the weather can change dramatically during the trek. We'd asked about weather conditions at the information site and we were told that the following day (today, Saturday) was looking like the best day to do the walk for the next few days. Now, ask me to jump out of a plane, fine. Ask me to raft down the scariest white water, fine. Ask me to abseil off the highest cliff, fine. But ask me to walk for 8 hours up a big hill in the middle of nowhere to complete seclusion, not fine! That is like my fears all in one, seclusion, endurance, challenging weather conditions – no it's not for me. I knew I would regret not doing the walk if I didn't go because it looks absolutely amazing and it's where they filmed the Mordor scenes in Lord of the Rings – it's big volcanic craters and beautiful turquoise lakes. I tried to psych myself up to say I would do it, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it out of my head that, no, I just didn't fancy it!! So eventually we agreed that Kev would sign up for the shuttle bus to the beginning of the route and I would spend the day by the pool in the camp-site. Hundreds of people do the walk everyday, so Kev assured me that he would get chatting to some people on the bus and tag along with them. I was really worried about him doing the walk on his own, but he convinced me that he wouldn't be on his own, so he booked himself on for a pick up at 5.30am the next day (he could have gone an hour later but I wanted him to go on the earlier one to give him maximum time to get back to civilisation before night closed in!!) All that was left to do was to stock up on Mars bars, bottles of water and food and we were done for the evening.

So at 5am this morning, Kev got up and despite having second thoughts about whether I should go with him late last night, when that alarm went off, I knew I had made the right decision!! He got ready to go while I sneaked some water purification tablets and other emergency supplies into his bag – he'd insisted I was being silly when I'd suggested he take such things the night before, but I wouldn't be able to rest if he wasn't prepared – I really should have been a boy scout!! And then he headed off to catch his bus from the camp-site entrance. I went back to sleep!

I have now spent the day assessing our budget (which is looking a bit scary now!!) and doing this blog, while lazing by the side of the pool. It's a beautiful hot day and so I'm sure Kev will be doing fine. For the most part I've had the pool completely to myself which has been great. Don't think we'll do much tonight as I suspect Kev will be in pain when he returns.

However, Kev has just returned having completed the 8 hour hike in about 6 hours! For someone who never does any exercise I have no idea how he is so fit! He said it wasn't even that bad! I asked him to write this bit about his hike but he doesn't like writing so I shall try and summarise what he has told me. The bus dropped him off at half seven in the morning at the start of the hike and it was so foggy and dark that he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. He headed off and the first two hours were really hard going – constant uphill trekking but it was all worth it when he got to the first crater and was above the clouds. He has shown me the photos of Mordor and it does look pretty cool. He said the worst bit was the hike down the other side because by then you'd already seen all the great views and the downward bit goes on for about 3 more hours and you just want to be at the end by then! Anyway, he'll tell you about it more and show you the photos which do look awesome, and yes, I am a wee bit gutted I didn't do it! Although Kev says I would have moaned...a lot! Good on him for doing it though, I said that people get sponsored to do less!

One final note for tonight – just got my phone bill and realised that I've been getting charged to use my email on my phone so email access will now be very limited and certainly don't expect any texts from us in the near future! Will still have phone if you need to get us in an emergency though of course! xxxx

Kaikoura Vineyard & Crayfish delight

2009-11-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

My other car's a Monster Truck!

2009-11-03T14:20:00.001-08:00

Puzzle World dude!

2009-11-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

Franz Josef Glacier

2009-11-03T00:40:00.000-08:00

Swimming with Dolphins - Kaikoura

2009-11-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

Quad Biking in Greymouth

2009-11-01T15:16:00.000-08:00

Milford Sound sea kayaking

2009-11-01T15:14:00.001-08:00

Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb

2009-11-01T15:08:00.001-08:00

This is a big one. Photos to follow soon x

2009-11-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

We left Queenstown, not appreciating it's greatness. Since leaving Queenstown, numerous people have recommended many things that we should have done while we were there! Gutted! My main regret was not doing the Nevis Arc, the largest swing in the world. Ah, well, next time! So we left to drive to Milford Sound. We made a quick grocery stop in the last place of civilisation in Te Anau. We drove into the town centre which consisted of one street with about 10 shops on it! Then we got back on the road to travel up the one and only road into Milford Sound – a 2 hour drive with no turn-offs, no civilisation, no nothing. There is one road into Milford Sound and that same road out, so it's a pretty isolated place. I don't really like isolation.

Along the way we stopped off at the Mirror Lakes which were small lakes with the most crystal clear, blue water I have ever seen. I think that will be my resounding memory of New Zealand – the amazing colour of the various waters here! Then we stopped off again later in another lay by to have a look at a crazy parrot like bird that we saw. It was huge and green and seemed really tame, coming right up to us and sitting on our van. We couldn't understand why there was a big sign saying 'do not feed the Kea', they seemed so cute. We would later discover that they are annoying and cheeky and they have learnt to look cute to extort food from tourists!!

The next obstacle on our journey to Milford Sound was the site of special interest, the Homer Tunnel. For anyone who is claustrophobic, I would not advise going through this tunnel – although if you want to visit Milford Sound you don't really have much choice! It's the strangest tunnel we'd ever seen. It's a tiny hole cut into this massive mountain, it's pitch black inside and only wide enough for one and a half cars, which can cause problems as it's a two way tunnel! It goes on for what seems like forever and if the feeling of being squished into a tiny black hole isn't scary enough, just think of all the tonnes of rock hanging above your head. Thankfully, I wasn't driving because if I had been I would have reversed right out of that tunnel entrance and headed back in the opposite direction. Even Kev had a fright when he first came across it but he powered on through, while I quickly picked up the camera (not to take photos of this odd site of interest I'm afraid) but to look through the day's photos that we'd already taken. It was the only way I could take my mind off the bizarre little version of hell that we had just entered into!

We made it out the other side and I put all my effort into not thinking about the return journey that loomed heavily over my head (but not as heavily as the mountain we had just travelled through). We arrived at the camp-site situated between two beautiful rivers with waterfalls running from either sides of the surrounding mountains, it was a glorious day. We then parked up before heading into the kitchen to cook the remains of yesterday's catch – the Rainbow Trout. It felt quite nice to clearly be the envy of all the other campers who were reluctantly beavering away over hot stoves making powdered pasta meals and tinned veg! When I pulled out my whopping great fish I could see the envy in their eyes! Many of them couldn't resist and asked me where I had caught the fine specimen. I proudly replied that I had scooped him fresh out of the lake just the day before. Some lingered around me for slightly too long, just looking, longingly at him as he lay quietly poaching in my frying pan. 'Oh yeah, that's going to taste so good' they would say, 'Yes, I know' I would reply! And sure enough, that was the nicest Rainbow Trout I've ever tasted, much nicer than the Brown Trout we had for dinner last night.

The next morning was an early start, which was just as well as the Kea had taken a shine to our van and were having a party on the roof. As soon as Kev stepped out of the van so they swarmed around him, begging for food, but when he didn't give in they tried to eat our toilet roll instead. Between them and the thousands of sand flies that infest Milford Sound (and which ate poor Kevin alive) we were having just about enough of wildlife. We met up with our Kayaking instructors and drove down to the Deep Basin area where we would get kitted up. Once we were attractively adorned in a succession of rubber layers it was time to get in to our boats. In true sexist fashion, every single pair on our trip chose to place the man in the driving seat at the back and the girl in the front. Kev had a bit of trouble adjusting his foot pedals correctly and as this was a fairly integral part of steering the rudder at the back, I was relatively keen shall we say, for him to get this adjustment correct. I think Kev would say here that he has never been as uncomfortable as he was on that day, squished into a tiny plastic hole with his legs in a very flexible frog position and his knees pushed up so far to the inside of the boat that they virtually came through the other side by the end of the day. We spent the entire kayaking trip moaning at each other, me moaning that Kev wasn't steering properly, and him moaning that I wasn't paddling correctly. But you have to realise that tensions were high that day because the thought of capsizing into the freezing cold, and surprisingly rough sea was at the forefront of our mind at all times. We paddled out into the sea and eventually stopped on an isolated beach for lunch. But while we were eating, so the weather completely changed and the sea that had, five minutes ago, been a haven of beauty, was now an ocean of waves big enough to sink the titanic! But we had to get back and so into the sea we went in our tiny little plastic boats, which Kev couldn't steer and I couldn't get to move – things weren't looking good. By now the thought of capsizing and getting really cold wasn't even the worst of it – if we capsized, there was a strong chance we would die (I think anyway!). Everyone else in the Sea Kayaking group managed to paddle off fairly confidently and it wasn't long before me and kev were being left behind. The waves were crashing over the front of the boat, the wind was raging in our faces and no matter how hard I paddled, we still didn't seem to go anywhere! It got to the stage where I felt like I was in the Wimbledon Final as with every push of the paddle I let out a huge and involuntary grunt, but nevertheless, we still barely moved! I thought I was going to cry at one point as I genuinely thought there was no way we were ever going to catch the rest of the group and there was no way we were going to survive this storm. But, as I'm sure you can imagine, we did survive and we did catch the group, thankfully. But things weren't about to get easier because now we were far out on a treacherous sea and even the guide said that if he'd known the weather would change like that, he wouldn't have brought us out – good to know! It was time for us to all 'raft up' and take safety in numbers. So we positioned our boats side by side and grabbed on to the boat next to ours. Me and Kev were the middle boat with Emma and Jeremy (from Australia) on our right and Terri and Dustin (from Georgia, USA) on our left. While Jeremy and Dustin tied a sail to the end of their paddles and held it up to the sky, Emma and Terri held the front bits of string attached to the sail. My job was to cling on hard to Emma and Terri's boats so that we all stuck together (seriously, no easy challenge I can tell you even for a girl with guns my size) and Kev's job was to be the skipper, hmmm, you guessed it, to steer the entire ship! Uh oh, I thought! But in fairness, we managed and despite pulling every single muscle in our bodies we sailed into shore. When we got to shore all the other couples were hugging each other lovingly, whereas me and Kev were still nipping at each other for our failures at sea. 'Look', I said, 'all the other couples had a lovely time and they still like each other at the end of it'. Little did I know, but would later learn, that all those other couples were just apologising to each other for the arguments they had also had at sea. That evening, in the pub, we would learn that the locals call those Kayaks, 'divorce boats', so we were not alone!

Back on dry land we all decided that we would meet up in Te Anau for a well deserved drink that evening, and we all headed back into our vans for the 2 hour drive, down the only road out of there. Oh, I forgot to say, we did sail past penguins, which was pretty cool, and the scenery was alright too! So, back through the scary tunnel and all the way to Te Anau, for a Saturday night on the town which consisted of one small street. We met up with Emma, Jeremy, Dustin and Terri and had a really good night. Terri told us all about her wedding (she and Dustin were on their honeymoon and instead of a regular wedding list, they had got everyone to buy them awesome things to do in New Zealand, so while they were there they were literally doing everything!). Terri had a great accent and being from a small town in Georgia, their wedding sounded like something out of a film. Terri arrived on basket of her dad's tricycle, all the guest sat on hay bales and they got married under a tree in their farm. Then Dustin wheeled Terri off in a wheel barrow and the whole town (about 300 people) had a big drinking session in the local brewery. It just sounded awesome. Emma and Jeremy, on the other hand, had taken a select few people to Vanuatu where they had paid a wedding organiser to do everything for them. Emma didn't even know what time she was being picked up in the morning, let alone anything else, but they had a great day getting married on the beach.

The next morning we drove to Wanaka, but we decided to make a quick stop in Queenstown to sample the famous Fergburger, and what a worthy stop that was – awesome blue cheese burger, oh yeah! Randomly, we bumped into Jeremy who was off river rafting (which I was very jealous of), but Emma had lost her voice and was taking a day off adventuring. We drove along the highest road in New Zealand then, from Queenstown to Wanaka, and while Kev thoroughly enjoyed driving at the top of the world with nothing but air and an incredibly steep drop either side of us, I spent the entire journey gripping my seat and trying not to think about the lack of safety barriers along this death trap of a windy, road. Kev kept saying, 'Wow, look at that view', but I kept my eyes fixed firmly to the floor of the van. We then continued on to Wanaka, down the windiest road I had been on by that point (yet not the windiest we would be on, the roads here are like a snakes and ladders game without the ladders – I exclaimed just the other day 'why can't they just built straight roads here?', but Kev cleverly pointed out that the outstanding mountain ranges were some what of a hindrance to straight roads). We went past an awesome pink Cadillac monster truck, naturally, we had to stop and have a look. I noticed that they had a real ex-American Monster Jam truck and my jaw dropped to the floor, especially when I found out you could even drive it yourself. I was totally sold and was even prepared to pay the $250 for the 8 minute drive. But then we met the guy who owned to trucks and he was a bit weird and I began to question the safety standards of the place, especially as this guy was an ex-stuntman who could barely walk. I decided against the drive and settled for my picture next to the Cadillac instead.

We arrived in Wanaka and were a little disappointed. Everyone had told us that it was like a less commercial Queenstown, but in actual fact it was just a tiny place next to a big river where a load of annoying hippies hung out. All the extreme activities that were on offer there involved getting picked up and taken back to Queenstown, which seemed a bit of a waste, so we didn't really fancy doing much there. The guy camped next to us recommended a good bar called Kai Whaka Pai. Keep in mind that in words here 'WH' is pronounced 'F' and now try and say the name of that bar – you can imagine why we weren't so sure about going there at first, but it turned out OK and we headed there for some drinks. I got annoyed by a hippy in moon print slacks who went to the bar and asked for a Pinot Gree – I even put on my facebook up date that the stupid hippy was too far-out to finish the rest of the word 'Grigios' (or however you spell it), but it turns out that I'm the stupid one because here they do called Pinot Grigios, Pinot Gris!

Anyway, the next morning we took the van to the beach around the lake and cooked up breakfast. While we were doing that, so Emma and Jeremy shot past in their camper van and by their shouts from the window as they went past, Emma's voice was clearly better. Me and Kev went for a walk and on our way back Kev took a photo of our van as we approached. As he did so, another camper van pulled up in front of ours and Kev said 'good job I took that photo when I did because now someone's ruined my shot', but then we realised it was Emma and Jeremy who had ruined his shot!! We all decided to go to puzzling world which had been recommended to me by Sarah in Glasgow (and Laura too). I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was, but there was this one room which messed up your head because, well I don't know why, but the floors or something was all weird and when you went it it felt like you couldn't stand up or walk – it was the strangest feeling and totally messed with your balance. It's hard to explain but hopefully the photos will make it clearer. Then we went to the outdoor maze and I challenged Emma and Jeremy to a competition, who could reach all four corners and then find their way out again first. It's scary how competitive I am and when we bumped into them in the maze and discovered they had already found 2 corners, while we hadn't even got to one, I forced Kev to pick up the pace and we literally ran around the 3km course! Sure enough – we won, but by about 5 seconds!!

We were all heading off to Franz Josef which was a long drive, so we planned on stopping along the way and we said we'd meet up. The drive was, again, majorly windy and there were heaps of tiny little one lane bridges over huge gorges. We stopped at 'The Gates of Haast', mainly because it sounded like it should be the name of an awesome rock band, but also because it looked pretty beautiful and we were both desperate for the toilet (here I just want to add that Ron's She Wee gift turned out to be not the most reliable of devices, I shall let your imagination do the rest!) The road was totally isolated and we past through what we thought were going to be towns, but they turned out to be like a cluster of 2 houses and a pub. We thought Haast (with it's impressive gates!) would be a big place, but it consisted of a petrol station and a couple of houses! It is beyond me how anyone can enjoy living in such remoteness, like 2 hours from any civilisation, but some people obviously do – in fact the guy in the petrol station at Haast was about 20 years old, I have no idea how they can live like that. I didn't even like driving through such remoteness and I was getting freaked out by the fact that we were literally in the middle of nowhere. I think that stretch of road had to be the most remote stretch we have done on the entire south island. Anyway, so me and Kev continued up the road but ended up further ahead that we were meant to meet and we spent the night in a camp-site in Fox Glacier rather than where we were meant to meet Emma and Jeremy. I felt so guilty about standing them up and it was playing on my mind for ages. That night, the camp-site was pretty spooky, with no lights and no-one camped around us. We went into the kitchen to eat dinner and when the windows steamed up we saw 'I see you', written in the misty window – that totally freaked me out! I didn't sleep too well that night.

The next morning, still feeling guilty, we walked to the edge of Fox Glacier. I was worn our by the time we got there, which made me nervous about the following day's Glacier Hike that we had booked up Franz Josef. Fox Glacier wasn't that impressive to be honest and we didn't stop long. We went to the view point which was further away and from there it looked much better, although I got freaked out because the little country road was blocked with huge cows and I didn't know how to drive in the vicinity of huge cows!

We drove the short distance up to Franz Josef and found our camp-site for the night. The weather was boiling, for the first time since we'd been here, so we spent the afternoon in a beer garden sampling the local beers (Monteiths). Then when it started getting cold again we decided to go to the hot pools just across from our camp-site. They were lovely and consisted of outdoor pools of varying temperatures. We settled on the 39 degree one and in there we got chatting to another Australian couple. We chatted to them for a couple of hours and then thought we should get out before we turned into prunes. Me and Kev thought we'd take one last dip in the cooler 37 degree pool first though. But then I heard someone calling my name and sure enough, there were Emma and Jeremy. I was so glad to see them and apologise for standing them up! They had just done the full day glacier hike and it sounded like pretty hard work and pretty dangerous at times! I was glad we were just doing the half day hike the following day.

We left the hot pools and went to the pub with Emma and Jeremy and there we met the other Australian couple that we had met in the pools (Thomas and Gabbi). I thought they were all from the same place in Australia, but turns out that country is pretty big and they live no where near each other – who'd have thought it eh!

The next morning we got up early to go on our hike. I was slightly worried I wouldn't be able to keep up with the fast pace of the hike, but I really had nothing to worry about. We got our big hiking boots on and got in the bus to the car park near the bottom of the glacier. Then we walked for 45 minutes to the foot of the glacier and there we were split into three groups – all of different speeds. We chose the slow group so that we could take our time and it soon emerged that being about 30 years younger than everyone else in that group, we were the fastest of them all. We were glad we took that group though as because everyone else was so slow, we really got our money's worth and spent longer on the glacier than the other teams.

Climbing the glacier was pretty easy, although one guy managed to fall over like 3 times!! Thankfully he didn't fall down the side of the glacier, but I don't know why he couldn't master the art of walking. Admittedly, crampons have a habit of getting caught in the laces of your other foot if you don't open your legs wide enough, but when your on the top of a very steep glacier (which as the name suggests is made of ice and very very slippy), most people quickly get used to the art of walking safely! We had a couple of really annoying Australian women in our group who were doing our heads in by the end of the trip, so we were glad to get to the bottom to be honest. It was totally worth doing, but wouldn't bother doing it again. We weren't lucky with the weather either and it was cold and rainy up there.

After the glacier climb we drove to Hokitika. We were thinking about staying there the night, but when we arrived it looked like somewhere out of the wild west. It is a place that's famous for it's New Zealand Jade and the jewellery they make from it. We had a look around, but didn't see anything we wanted and certainly didn't see a ring, well, I did see one, but in typical Rosy style it was about £200!! We popped into the information centre and booked our Quad Biking trip for the morning and it turned out the woman we booked it with is married to the guy who took us out on our Quad bikes – inbred little place! We drove on up to Greymouth in the pouring rain and parked up at a camp-site just outside of the town centre. We went on line briefly to book our Dolphin Swimming in Kaikoura in a few days and I even booked my Skydive for next Monday over the Abel Tasmin national park – I can still back out and only lose my deposit!! The weather was awful and it was so wet that we couldn't be bothered to try and cook. We went to the local restaurant and had some delicious Monkfish and a beer, perfect. Back to the camp-site and I went to the kitchen to fill the hot water bottle, which was going to be much needed that night. The camp-site was pretty gypo to be honest and I didn't really want to chat to anyone, but as is always the way, in the Kitchen some bloke dressed all in desert style camo started chatting to me. Turned out to be pretty interesting as he was a buffalo hunter from Australia. He lived in the middle of nowhere and when he needed to do his grocery shopping he had to take an 8 hour drive to the store, stay overnight and then drive 8 hours back the next day! I asked him what it's like to not see people for weeks at a time and he simply replied 'why would I want to see anyone?' - I didn't really have a response ready for that question and it would have felt some what rude to have said 'well, because humans are social creatures who should thrive off interaction with fellow members of their species'. So, I just laughed and made my exit – swiftly. If I thought Fox Glacier camp-site was spooky, this one was ten times worse – cold, windy, rainy, no lights and a Buffalo Hunter who hated humans lurking around, no doubt with his gun and Possum poison in hand (he was in New Zealand killing possums – turns out they hate them here and my Possum wool gloves and socks are apparently the equivalent of us wearing rat skin to keep us warm – never mind they do the job well!).

The next morning, Wednesday morning, we drove to the other side of Greymouth to the Quad Biking Farm. There we had 300 acres of muddy, swampy Quad Biking track to speed through and we were both really looking forward to getting wet. The Quad Bikes were much bigger than I though and surprisingly hard to steer, in fact, my upper body is aching all over today! We went round a practice track, which was scary enough, but the guide assured me that I would get my confidence after just 10 minutes. Sure enough, I did and we had great fun speeding through the swamps. There was a couple of hairy moments where I thought I was going to tip myself over and land with the bike on top of me, which would have seriously been disastrous, but we made it through. The guide stopped us at the half way point to tell us the history of the farm, which was great as it used to be a gold mining area and even now there are hidden gold pits that can be like 50 metres deep and sometimes if people walk off the beaten track they fall down them – that's the truth, no legend. He told us about the trees, but I can't remember what they're called, they begin with M. Anyway, you're not allowed to chop them down now, but it used to be what all the houses on the west coast were built from, but because they're such slow growing trees you can only cut a limited number down now. All very interesting.

After the biking, we headed on up to Hanmer Springs. We'd heard so many people saying that the hot springs in Hanmer Springs were to die for, so we were pretty excited. But when we got there we realised that Hanmer Springs is a tiny town that has built up around a glorified swimming pool. Inside the 'Spa' there were a few pools which felt positively cold compared to the ones in Japan and in each of the pools were hundreds of very gypo tourists. Me and Kev sat in the hottest one briefly before leaving!

We went to the pub across the road and entered in for the pub quiz. There was only two of us on our team and we obviously had no local knowledge, so we didn't like our chances. But by half time, we were in third place! There were so many answers that we were going to write and then we changed our minds and it turns out they were the right one and things like that, we were getting so frustrated. The question master asked which female author has sold the most fiction books and I knew it was Agatha Christie, I knew it, we wrote it down and then we thought, oh, hang on, now maybe JK Rowling has over taken good old Agatha – hmmm, yeah, scribble out Agatha and put Scottish woman in her place – you guessed it, the answer was Agatha! There were so many of those type incidents that we were getting really worked up! Then some drunken bum sat next to us and proceeded to spit his steak all over me while telling me he had the best idea for a documentary that would really make me get a name for myself in the TV World – hmm, really? - I hate it when people do that and the worst thing about it was that he was interrupting our last few rounds of the quiz. I'm going to blame the drunken bums distraction for the fact that we came second to last in the quiz at the end. But it wasn't all bad because first place, second place and second from last place all won a prize – good times – a $10 bar tab was proudly ours! The only problem was that we couldn't spend it because we didn't want to sit with the drunken bum any more. So we got up and left and then walked back in the other door. Thankfully, the bum had gone and we had one drink for the road.

We walked back to the camp-site in the pitch black and here in New Zealand you know you're totally safe. But that doesn't stop me getting the heeby jeebies about zombies or ghosties. When Kev blurted out, oh look someone's coming, I punched him in the stomach for scaring me!! There was indeed someone coming, but just a bloke walking in the other direction, not a zombie or a ghost, so fear not people! (P.s. To Kev's family – I didn't really punch him in the stomach, it was more a gentle tap, but no seriously, I didn't!)

Talking of the McCrae family, it's pretty interesting that there are loads of McCrae's here and the history of the clan is really fascinating. Basically, centuries ago, the McCrae's in Scotland were facing hard times because as each generation had a family, so their farmland was getting split between each child and with each generation the farmland got smaller and smaller so that eventually they couldn't make a living off it. So the McCrae's were the first Scots to come over here to New Zealand (I think most of them came to Dunedin). They were a fierce bunch and they had come from such times of hardship that no-one in New Zealand messed with the McCrae's. They were known for their fighting skills (much like Kev McCrae, hmmm?!) and now there are loads of them here. Apparently, in a place called Gore (where we've not got time to go to) there is a whole museum dedicated to them. It's funny because before I came here, everyone said that New Zealand is like Wales, but from what I've seen on the south island and what with all the Scottish street names etc... it's a lot like Scotland here, especially the highlands. So far I've not seen anything other than sheep that reminds me of home!!

The next morning we got up and drove to Kaikoura, which was about a 2 hour drive away. The sea in Kaikoura is just beautiful, turquoise and so clear and the weather had perked up so it just looked stunning. We went to the Point Keen (I think that's what it was called) and saw all the huge seals there. Then we went to the local winery and sampled 6 of their finest wines. It was good fun because they gave you a sheet of paper which told you what you should be able to smell and taste and it was good to actually be able to smell and taste the things you were meant to. I bought a lovely bottle of rose which tastes of strawberries and cream!! Then we went to the Green Dolphin on the sea front which had been recommended to us by Emma and Jeremy. Here we had to try the Crayfish, which is what their famous for here in Kaikoura (that and Dolphin swimming), but the name Kaikoura means 'to eat Crayfish', apparently! It was pretty expensive but we had to try it and it was delicious and despite initial hesitation, Kev enjoyed getting stuck in with his scoop and nut crackers. He enjoyed showing me how much meat he could get out of the legs, but as with the crabs in Singapore, the legs of the Crayfish freaked me out, especially the front ones right by the Crayfish's huge googly eye looking up at me! It's gross when you try and break a leg off but then it bends at the knee while you're doing it- it just reminds you that you're eating a leg with a joint that once worked! The meat was good though and the cheesecake that followed topped it off a treat.

Then it was back to the camp site to get an early night ready for dolphin swimming in the morning. That next morning we headed straight to the Kaikoura Encounter centre, where I thought it would be a good idea to have a really hearty breakfast to ensure there was no sea sickness issues on board the boat. I had Eggs and spinach and a hollandaise sauce – such a bad move!! We checked in at reception where they warned us that there was a 'moderate sea sickness level' that day. I bought a herbal sea sickness table just in case. We got kitted up into our wet suits and flippers and snorkels and then hopped on a bus to the jetty. On board the boat we raced through the choppy waves in search of the famous Dusky Dolphins. While all around me were beginning to be sick, I proudly exclaimed that the herbal tablets were great as I was feeling fine! Gradually more and more people began asking for buckets and all around us people were looking green and hanging their heads in their multi-coloured plastic tubs. As time went on, it was looking less and less likely that we were going to find any dolphins and we started to resign ourselves to the fact that we needed to be happy with the massive Albatross sightings and seal spotting that we had done (did you know the Albatross' wing span can reach 3.5m – they're massive). But then, all of a sudden, we saw the Dolphins and it was time to quickly put on our snorkels and get into position at the back of the boat. When the siren sounded we slid off the boat into the cold, deep, very deep, ocean. It was a really surreal experience and it took me and Kev about 10 minutes to get used to the snorkels – it made us both panic getting used to only being able to take shallow breaths out of your mouth – eventually we got the hang of it and we put our heads down and started to sing to the dolphins under the water. Gradually they began swimming around us, but because they're totally wild we weren't allowed to try and touch them. Also, because they're wild and not coaxed to us in any way, we had to make ourselves interesting to them to keep them with us and make them want to swim with us. We had to sing and try and dive down and swim around them – I wasn't very good at any of this, but somehow we managed to get a load swimming around us. Like I say, it was really surreal and almost feels like it didn't actually happen. I can't really explain it but it was a bit like a hazy dream, but we loved it. That was...until....the sea sickness kicked it. It hadn't even occurred to me that you could get sea sick when you weren't in a boat!! Every time we put our head under water and the waves swayed us from side to side, we felt our stomachs churn. It wasn't long before we were both feeling rough but we didn't want to get out of the water because how many times in your life do you get to go out into the middle of the ocean and swim with wild dolphins!! We carried on as long as we could and then had to go back to the boat. There I proceeded to chuck up my breakfast and Kev had to walk away rather than help me otherwise he would have been sharing my bucket!! The staff were great though and I felt so sorry for them as they literally went from person to person emptying their buckets!! Man, I was so so sick and I was happy when we finally got back to shore, Kev was too, although he had managed to hold his breakfast in. I was tempted to ask for my $2 back for the sea sickness tablet but I figured the staff emptying my bucket twice was worth $2!! All in all a fantastic trip though, but I have vowed that there will be no more sea based activities for me on this trip!!

We got back into the van to drive to Nelson. We stopped off for a pie in Blenheim which seemed like a pretty pikey place and then continued on to Nelson. When we got there it was really strange because we'd got so used to being in places with a maximum population of about 100 people (well, maybe a few thousand more than that, but still not many!!) that it felt really odd to be in a city and it was a bit scary to see other traffic on the road. At the campsite some local fisherman came over and gave us a whole load of massive fresh cooked mussels because he had too many and they couldn't eat them all. I heated them up on the BBQ and they were absolutely delicious. Kev refused to have any though, saying that they looked too much like big bogies to him!!! Nelson turned out not to be the most happening of cities, but after we'd parked the van up we headed into the town centre to see what Halloween night had to offer in Nelson. We went to the main street and couldn't find a bar with any people in it, it was like a ghost town and pretty eerie. We chose one bar in the end where there was a live band dressed as zombies playing. The bouncer told us that Nelson didn't really get going to ten O'Clock – it was 9.40pm at the time so we didn't have high hopes for that Saturday night! We went in and got a drink and sat down to watch the amazing dancing that was unfolding before our eyes, I've never seen legs move in that way before, but it was a sight for sore eyes and the locals clearly loved the band that was playing. We got chatting to a guy from Dallas, Texas and his stories of back home made me want to go there even more. He used to work on the oil rigs in Dallas, how cool is that!! We're going to really try hard to find the time to visit Dallas when we're in America, fingers crossed.

We left after a couple of drinks and walked back to the van. Halloween, Saturday night, tucked up in bed by half 11, good work! This morning we got up and drove to Motueke, about an hour up the coast from Nelson and in the beginning of the Abel Tasmen National Park. It's much smaller than Nelson but is a really cool place and we were gutted we didn't just come here straight last night. We stopped off at the information centre to find out where we could park up tonight and it turns out that the girl at the counter is also doing a sky dive with me at 9am tomorrow morning, she's never done it before either and she's totally freaking out, so that makes me feel better – guess I'll see her there.

We drove on to further ahead in Abel Tasmen to Sandy Bay, just near Marahau. This is the gate to the national park and is absolutely beautiful, even if the roads are a little scary! We wandered along of a deserted beach with white sand and crystal clear water (but the water was really cold so no swimming!!). And the whole beach was surrounded by forest – it was lush, literally!! I popped into a little arts and crafts shop on along the road and picked up my most expensive ring yet :o It's New Zealand Jade though and it's hand made so that's why it was expensive, beautiful though, just like the place I bought it!!

We drove back to Motueke and parked up in a camp site then walked into town to visit the Gothic Pub that we had seen along the way. Turned out that was closed and not much else was open on this Sunday night in a tiny town. We went into one bar and we are now sat listening to some awful band playing while I'm writing this, Kev is not happy!! Got the skydive in the morning, so I'm pretty freaked out about that and fingers crossed I'll be in one piece to write the next instalment of this blog. xxx

Extreeeemmmeeee Fishing!!

2009-10-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

Going to Rehab

2009-10-28T02:20:00.000-07:00

Ozfest

2009-10-22T03:55:00.000-07:00

Return to Oz

2009-10-22T03:50:00.000-07:00

G'day mate!

2009-10-22T03:38:00.000-07:00

Last Days of 20 something...

2009-10-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

Well the next day in Sydney did pick up a little, although I really hate to say it but Kev still insists Sydney is his least favourite place out of everywhere he's been so far! I, on the other hand, wouldn't go that far, but I must say I didn't love Sydney. It reminds me of Glasgow, and having said that, I love living in Glasgow! I love the old low rise buildings mixed with the high rise modern blocks, but unfortunately, the skyline in Singapore was better. For some reason the low rise buildings here, especially along George Street, just look a little run down and in need of a clean – sorry to anyone I'm offending here!!

However, we did have a good day that day on the 17^th October – my last day of being twenty-something! We woke up and went for breakfast in the famous Paddy's Market – and a very good breakfast it was too. We then wandered around some shops and I bought a lovely, if a little expensive (everything in Sydney was expensive) leopard print top. (Speaking of expensive, I just want to stress that our hostel in Sydney cost £15 less a night that the 5 star hotel we were to stay in in New Zealand – they were world's apart! I would say Sydney was a bit of a rip off to be honest).

So new clothes in hand, I was in a good mood, and we went for a walk through the centre as we'd been advised the best place to buy a ring was Utopia Records. We couldn't find Utopia records and so I was forced to buy an OK ring from an Aborigine (That's the wrong adjective isn't it?!) shop, time was getting low and ring number 8 needed to be purchased!

Unfortunately, we didn't get time to go over to Manly, which had been recommended to us. We walked through the botanical gardens to the harbour (the largest natural harbour in the world) and there you can see the image of Sydney that you see on every TV advert, every poster, every everything about Sydney! The Opera house is cool and it's cool to be there having seen it so many times on TV. The Sydney Harbour Bridge towers behind it and we looked up at it thinking, uh oh, we're climbing that later. We could see loads of people climbing the bridge during the day and they just looked like little lines of ants trotting across the top, funny to think we were going to be one of those little ants later on that day! It looked really super high and I suddenly thought, hmm, I'm not scared of heights, but then I've never really been up very high, so how do I know if I'm scared of heights!! Time would tell.

We spent a fair while around the harbour, taking in the sights and watching the bible basher with more money than sense flying over us and writing 'Jesus is Love' or 'Jesus is Life' etc in a smoky scrawl in the sky. We wandered back through the park but this time came across a section that was plentiful with huge bats hanging down from the trees above us. It felt like we were in that scene in the Lost Boys where Michael goes into the cave and all the vampires are hanging above his head sleeping – it freaked me out a little, but I love bats and I was fascinated, they were huge, and I mean huge!! They began waking up, which we didn't understand because vampires can't be awake during the day time ?!? A few flew right over our heads and we just couldn't get over the size of them, their wing span was the width of our camper van, like 5ft, it was incredible. Later, our Sydney Bridge guide told us they were flying foxes, I think that's what they're called. Oh, in the park we also saw these random birds with huge beaks and our guide told us that they were Ibis, the flying rats of Sydney she called them, so I guess we can compare them to dirty pigeons back home.

The Bridge climb was getting closer so we thought we'd better get some food in and we came across a pub food place near the harbour. It was a sports bar but we didn't realise a sports bar in Sydney is a betting shop with a bar in it! Imagine the people we dined with that day, I leave the imagery up to you!

We gobbled our food and headed back to the poshness of the harbour. Signed in for our climb and sat and waited for our number to be called. Finally the 5.35 slot was called and we huddled into our briefing room with the other ten people who would be climbing with us that night. First we signed a declaration, then we had a breathalyser test to make sure we hadn't had any alcohol that day (unusual for us, but we passed! ;) ) Next was the cheesy ice breaker where we all stood in a circle and introduced ourselves to each other: 'hi, I'm Rosy, I'm about to turn old!' Then we got handed our attire – a jump suit and some waterproof trousers. Once we had gotten changed, we had to clip everything on to ourselves. Clips for our sunglasses, I had to take off my head band, bobble and hair pins, take off anything around our wrists and generally anything we had on us had to come off! If it wasn't part of the boiler suit or clipped onto the boiler suit, it was coming off! Then we went in to meet our guide who showed us how to put our big harness on. Then we were given headlamps, beanies, gloves, hankies, parachutes (they weren't parachutes they were bundled up fleece jackets for when it got cold, and it would get cold!!) and radios – all of this had to be securely fastened to clips positioned all around our jump suits.

Finally we had to prove we could climb the steep bits by climbing a demo set of ladders. The ladders were really steep and I began thinking, uh oh, what have we let ourselves in for!! But then it was time to get clipped on to the bridge and from there there was no turning back. I asked to go at the front by the guide, naturally, always wanting to be first in line!!! So we first walk along the flat bit before climbing vertical ladders which bring you up on to the road bridge, I think it was between lane 4 and 5!! Then from there you begin the gentle climb up the arch of the bridge. It was awesome to do this at twilight because we went up in day light and saw the view of the opera house in beautiful sunshine. Stopped for a picture moment there. Then we got to the top and had a 360 degree view of Sydney at twilight, just as the sun was setting and the sky was turning red – it was beautiful...cold...but beautiful. Then we started our descent in the pitch black and saw the Sydney skyline at night. It was amazing to see a clock tower which was the second highest point of the Sydney skyline when the bridge was built in the 1920s – that clock tower looked tiny now compared to the other buildings around it. It was really good to find out about how the bridge was made and stuff too – pretty brave workers to be up there with no clips or harnesses – all for like minimum wage too because it was built in the depression and so they were just glad to have a job!!

Apparently 1500 people climb the Sydney bridge every day and it's open to the public almost every day of the year – we were all paying over £100 each, so whoever came up with the bridge climb idea must be raking it in!! Oh and on the bridge you could see all this red dust, which apparently was left over from the dust storm they had there a couple of weeks ago – apparently you couldn't see a thing because of the dust – I didn't even hear about that while we were travelling! We had perfect weather and perfect visibility, we could see the silhouette of the blue mountains and I think we had chosen the best night to do the climb on. It was, without doubt, the best part of our stay in Sydney. It didn't feel that high once we were right at the top – I think because it's just water below. It felt scarier coming down and seeing the road beneath you with the cars and the train hurtling past!! Great experience and can highly recommend it.

We got changed out of our gear once we were off the bridge and went to chose our photos – I was very disappointed that I looked absolutely minging in all the pictures and I began to think I just looked minging because I was getting old!! In fairness, I think it was the fact that I'd accidentally died my hair purple while dying my hair with Australian hair dye, and it was baultic cold up there!!

So we wandered back to the hostel and stopped off for a quick beer to reflect on out time in Sydney. It didn't take us long to conclude that the harbour was nice and the bridge climb was awesome, but we wouldn't be coming back here in a hurry I'm afraid.

It was early to bed as we had a super early start the next day. Up at 3am and at the airport by 4 having been picked up by a drunken taxi driver who decided to fill us in on his broken heart after a girl in Bali chose another rich (but ugly) man to marry rather than our drunken taxi driver!! Luckily, he broke his story to skid to halt and avoid a shopping trolley in the middle of the road, before driving on and continuing to tell us his tale, which would have been worthy of the best of Steve Wright's old show!

We boarded our flight to Christchurch and I insisted that I wasn't turning 30 until it turned 12 O'clock in the UK. Sure enough, our plane touched the run way in Christchurch bang on 12 O'clock and Kev counted down the seconds until the moment came, partly because he hates flying and he loves it when the plane lands, but mainly because he's been enjoying winding me up about getting old for some time now! We were glad to get to Christchurch where immediately everyone seemed lovely – even the sniffer dogs in the airport were super cute and the immigration and quarantine officials were so lovely compared to the Australian ones.

We easily found the bus stop to the centre of town, but we'd just missed the bus. The expensive shuttle bus service offered to take us to our hotel for the price of the bus, so we hopped in. An easy trip to the centre of Christchurch, Cathedral Square, and we found our beautiful 5 star hotel. We checked in to our gorgeous room which was massive with a huge bath and soft soft soft dressing gowns – ah, it was heaven! I had a lovely bath and for the first time managed to actually dress up a bit. We headed out to find a bar and a steak (I had put a Steak on my list of things I wanted for my birthday! And seen as that was the only thing on my list of things I wanted, Kev felt obliged to find me one!) We found a lovely little Irish Bar and got a delicious steak, man it was good. We had a pint of Export Gold, but then Nes text and told me I should be drinking Stein, so we switched to that. After we'd eaten we headed out to see if any other bars were better. It was so so so cold in Christchurch and the other bars seemed dead so we swiftly ran back to the Irish bar to warm up. I swear the wind here is coming straight from South Pole!

The bar was picking up and a couple would be providing the live music for the night. In fairness, the band were rubbish but it was a good atmosphere in the bar. A middle aged couple sat down next to us and before long we were chatting away and it turned out, the guy's ancestors were Scottish – his name was Keith McKellan! When it was time for the bar to close, the McKellan's told us they'd show us a good club to go to and when we got there, they couldn't resist coming in too! Inside a much better band were playing and strangely enough they were playing one of my favourite songs by Sublime. It's weird, this song is following me round the world – you never hear it anywhere back home, but everywhere we go it seems to be playing – it was on the radio when we picked up our camper the next day too – so weird! So we had a dance and a few more drinks and the band said happy birthday and welcomed us to New Zealand which was lovely. The management brought us over a complimentary pizza and we had an absolute ball. There were even some local celebs there, although unsurprisingly I didn't recognise them – they just looked like a bunch of lesbians to me, but everyone else in the club was loving them!!

Very drunken, we somehow made it back to our hotel. Thank god we were staying in such a nice hotel because the next day was just great. We did nothing, but watch TV and relax in the big comfy bed with the big comfy pillows and the big comfy duvet. It was cold outside, but that hotel room was perfect. Although, our tummies were grumbling and while we had treated ourselves to stay there, we couldn't justify the room service. So we got up and went to MacDonalds – I've never eaten so many MacDonalds as I have on this trip – I don't even eat them back home!! True to form, we followed the MacyD's with a Starbucks and I even bought a carton on Chai Latte mix ready for the cold Camper Van nights when I would be far from any Starbucks!! We went to visit some shops and bought an atlas and a guide book for New Zealand. Kev bought a huge coat, which he very much needed, and I bought some new tops, which I also very much needed! We wandered for a bit and realised that Christchurch is really pretty, really traditional buildings, I liked it there. We popped in to see where we would be picking up our camper van the next day. There was a demo model outside the shop and so we inspected what we were letting ourselves in for for the next three and a half weeks. Having seen the awesome, but very, very small camper van we headed back to the hotel to savour the last few hours of comfort – it would be a long time before we would feel comfort like that again! We watched hours of films as it would be a long time before we had a TV again and I soaked in a boiling hot bath as it would be a long time before I would be able to warm my bones like that again!

The next morning we reluctantly checked out of the lovely hotel and went for breakfast, again, a very good breakfast (Craig, all the food comments are for you as I know you love discussing meals and how they're cooked!). Then it was time to go and pick up 'Rehab'. Rehab is the name of our camper van, not given by us I can assure you! Each of these funny little vans has it's own name and it's own individual graffiti all over it. They're great and inside there's just enough room for a bed. There's a little kitchen area at the back with a heater, a sink, cooking utensils, a little stove and basically everything basic you will need. I wasn't keen on the way the guy in the shop kept saying 'yeah, you guys are out there for a while, so you're going to need....' - I hadn't really thought that we were 'out there' for a while – he made it sound like we were heading to the middle of nowhere on some kind of survival course! He told us that we really wouldn't need to stay in powered sites and we should just stay at DOC sites, which are free conservation sites. He said, at night, just wind the window down a little and use body heat to warm the van (wind the window down so the moisture can escape and we don't start living in a fridge). He said, on the first night, he would recommend we stay in a powered site and see how we get on sleeping with no heating. Then, if we struggle, and it gets to like 4am and we can't cope any more, we can at least turn the heating on. If we survive, we'll know we don't need to pay for powered sites while we're away. Well, I can tell you, we took his advise and went to a powered site first of all and I can tell you, we lasted till...no, not quite 4am...we lasted until 7pm and we were frozen and that heating went on – needless to say, it's going to be powered sites all the way and that heating is staying well and truly on!!

So, we drove our cute little van to a supermarket where we stocked up on supplies and then headed to Lake Tekapo. As soon as we saw the lake, we could not get over the colour. It's like a turquoise, powdery blue (apparently from the glaciers grinding against the type of rock that surrounds it and making the water that powdery blue). Absolutely stunning, I've never seen anything like it. But, as beautiful as it was there, it was colder that anywhere I've ever been on earth. Now, I know, in Kuala Lumpur I uttered the words, 'I will never, ever complain about being cold again'. I know I said that, but seriously, this place was cold and I actually thought I might die, so I complained!! We quickly made our dinner in the communal kitchen (but there were some really annoying, drunken Australians in there, so we didn't dawdle). Then we went back to the van to put on every item of clothing we owned and to switch the heating on full blast. It soon got toasty in the van, but I must admit, it was a cold night's sleep at Lake Tekapo.

But, we made it through the night and woke up to head off to Queenstown. It wasn't too long a drive but it took us most of the day. We passed an old gold mine, a bungy jumping bridge and an orchard called Sarita!! When we did arrive in Queenstown, we checked into a really nice campsite and it immediately felt much warmer and sheltered from the wind. We had a good spot, right by the toilets and right by the Kitchen and next to a fellow Escape Camper Van occupied by two Scottish guys!!

We went out for a wander and I bought myself some Possum Merino Wool gloves and socks, as recommended by Jo! We went into one bar for a drink but it was pretty dead so we left straight away. We were walking along, looking for another bar and just as we were about to walk past the Base Hostel, I said, 'hey, why don't we just go for a drink in the hostel bar?', so we did. Now how weird is this, as we sat there having a beer, so this guy walks in. First Kev starred at him. Then I starred at him and I said, 'hey, doesn't that guy look like Darren'. Darren is a guy from Bristol that we met back in Fuji in Japan and we'd kept in contact via Facebook ever since. I though Darren had left the South Island and was going on up to the North, but no, it turned out, it was Darren – how strange that you bump into the same person in Japan and then in New Zealand. Anyway, so we had a drink with him and heard about all the things he'd been doing here – swimming with dolphins, jumping out of planes and falling to the ground at a rate of 20 storeys per second. It all sounded great fun and I'm going to see if I can pluck up the guts to do a sky dive in Abel Tasmin when we get there.

After watching the Jager Train in this pub (where a load of people do a domino thing with shots of Jegermesiter and then down it) and hearing how one girl was celebrating her 18^th birthday, we felt terribly past it and decided to head back to the camper!!

This morning, we had a lie in and in fact, I think Kev could have slept all day. We cooked up a big breakfast and then went to see what we should do today. We popped into the Ice Bar (where, as the name would suggest, everything is made of ice), well, we went to the reception to see about booking a half hour slot in the bar, but having seen the pictures we decided it didn't look that great and we suspect the one in LA will be better, so we gave that a miss. Then we went out and watched some guys doing Parasailing. We toyed with the idea of having a shot, where you get dragged through the air behind a speed boat, but when we looked into it, it was a ten minute ride, which seemed a bit rubbish. So, instead, we decided to go fishing – I was so excited. Basically, we had a boat to ourselves and we went out really far into the lake and let the lines out. I said to the skipper (who had also been Ian Botham's stunt double in a Shredded Wheat advert, no lie!), 'so, have you ever had anyone be sea sick in your boat'. He proudly boasted, that, no, no-one had ever been sea sick in his boat. Well, that was about to change!!

Without warning, the winds changed and before long we were rocking around in that little boat like we were trawler men out at sea. Honestly, I thought the boat was going to topple over. And just when I was feeling at my worst, so Kev decided he was catching a fish. I had to try and take photos of him hauling in his whopper of a Rainbow Trout while the boat swayed from one side to the next. My eyes couldn't work out what my head was doing and my head didn't have a clue what my body was doing and I was basically all over the shop -urgh, it makes me feel sick just thinking about it. The skipper noticed I had turned a ghastly shade of green and decided it was time to take us to calmer waters. Thank goodness, we stopped in another bay which was way calmer and I returned to my old self – excited about the prospect of catching a fish bigger than Kiev's!

Sure enough, then it was my turn and I reeled in a lovely speckled Brown Trout. It did feel a wee bit cruel to bring him in, but that was going to be my dinner for the night so I didn't feel too bad. I didn't do the smacking over the head thing, the skipper did all that gruesome stuff. We fished for a bit longer but then our time was up (and in fairness, he'd let us stay out much longer than we were meant to seen as we had bad water). We reeled all the lines in and then Kev realised he had another one on the end of his. He reeled in a whopping Brown Trout. Back at shore, the skipper showed me how to gut a fish and I was really surprised at how easy it is.

Still feeling a bit sea-legged, we stopped at a pub called 'The World' for a coke to settle my stomach. The guy behind the bar was English and that sums this place up really. Queenstown is nice, well, the natural world is nice, but the town has just been completely built for tourists. I wouldn't say I like it here as much as Christchurch, but Kev is the opposite, he prefers here – what a surprise, me and Kev being opposite – imagine that!! :)

Back at the campsite we cooked our fish, with some lovely vegetables and tucked in. I'd never had brown trout before, but it was delicious. Although, we couldn't eat it all and we've still got another trout in the fridge for tomorrow's tea! After dinner, Kev wanted to go out, but the wind had picked up and it was freezing, so I persuaded him it was best to stay in tonight!! So it's been a night in the van and time to catch up on this blog, which has taken me the best part of an hour and a half. Kev has fallen asleep!! Heading off to Milford Sound tomorrow and doing some Kayaking on Saturday – Happy Birthday for Saturday Sarita by the way!! (And Emma if you're reading this, not sure if you are though!!). Now I hope we can get some photos up on here, so I hope you enjoy xxx

It's 5am and everything stinks of fish!

2009-10-22T03:27:00.000-07:00

Hello Matsu-moto!!

2009-10-22T03:18:00.000-07:00

Wassssssaaab-i?

2009-10-22T03:06:00.000-07:00

Monkey Magic!

2009-10-22T02:49:00.001-07:00

Canyoning rocks!

2009-10-16T05:42:00.001-07:00

Hak-oo-oo-ba!

2009-10-16T05:35:00.001-07:00

On our first morning in Hakuba we got up super early to catch the bus to the famous Snow Monkey Park (apparently the only place the Macaque Monkeys bathe in natural hot springs). After getting two long buses we had a 45 minute trek up through the forests. All along the way were signs to watch out for snakes and all kinds of other creatures, but I was more concerned about the monstrous spiders they have here.

We eventually arrived at the Monkey Park and it was surprisingly scary – the monkeys were everywhere and even though they're obviously really used to visitors, they are still wild animals. There were fights constantly breaking out between male monkeys and they'd run around after each other, screaming at each other and paying no regard to the tourists that got in their way. It was amazing to be so close to the monkeys but it wasn't quite as natural as the tour guides made out – basically the hot springs had been built and while the water was naturally hot, sneaky Park owners had placed food in the water to tempt the monkeys in. But nevertheless, it was great to be so close to wild monkeys and they did look cute while they were bathing. You'll notice though, that every photo Kev took of me in the Monkey Park, depicts me with a look of sheer panic on my face. I'd been told not to look the monkeys in the eye as that is a sign to them that you want to start a fight. Needless to say, I really didn't want to start a fight with any of these monkeys and so I spent the majority of my time there staring at the floor so as not to even catch a Monkey eye! Kev, meanwhile, enjoyed the challenge of getting as up close as he could in order to capture the perfect shot!

When I decided we had tried our luck for too long and it was only a matter of time before we got caught in the middle of a vicious looking Monkey Fight, worse than any Saturday night in Glasgow, we started our trek back to the bottom of the mountain. We decided to take the longer walk to the train station, through the town of Yudanaka. I could not get over the size of the spiders all along the side of the pavements there. The spiders have these massive abdomens and they are bright green and yellow and striped. They just look evil.

We found the train station and got a tiny little train to Obuse (pronounced Ob-boo-say). It's here that the Saki factory is found and we had wanted to visit and try to some real home made Saki. We sat down at the Saki bar and ordered a couple of different samples. While we waited for our drinks I noticed everyone around me seemed to be dipping in to these little bowls of what looked like Sherbet, situated all around the bar. There were bowls of 'sherbet' of all different colours and these tiny little spoons in it for you to take a measure and pour it into your hand. Everyone was doing this and then licking their hand and in it's pink fluffiness, it looked like the sherbet dib dabs you get as a kid. 'That's a nice touch', I thought and I proceeded to dip into the closest bowl. It wasn't long before I realised that this wasn't sherbet, but was indeed the strongest salt I've ever tasted. The bar man told me, only after I'd discovered this for myself, that the plan was to drink the saki and then lick the salt – seemed a bit backwards to us Brits who are used to the lick, drink, suck technique for Tequila slammers, but when in Rome.... So we took a sip of Saki and a lick of salt, but the salt did nothing to ease the taste of the neat alcohol I had ingested. With or without the salt, I couldn't drink any of my saki, it was as I imagined meths to taste and not an enjoyable drink in the slightest. Kev however, went on to sample a few different types eventually concluding that the most expensive one was his favourite – think my expensive taste must be wearing off on him!

We were going to go the art gallery just round the corner where Hakusa (that's probably totally wrong, but something like that – the guy who did that really famous block painting of a wave)'s work was on display – but to be honest, we just couldn't be bothered, so we didn't bother! We stopped at the supermarket and bought ingredients to make a home made meal – this was a very exciting prospect for me, eating out all the time soon wears thin and I was craving a spaghetti bolognese type pasta dish. We bought some mince meat that we hoped wasn't horse (although I was up for giving that a go if it had been!) and later in the hostel, the owners confirmed it was beef and pork mince mix! Why chose between them when you can have both – I like this philosophy when it comes to food!

So with our pre-dinner bagged up we found our train and then bus all the way back to Hakuba and there we took the creepy walk back to the hostel. It's such a quiet, little place in Hakuba that they don't really have street lights so it feels really creepy walking around, although you know you're totally safe because you're in Japan!

The next day we were kind of both dreading and yet counting down until, all at the same time – it was the morning of the canyoning. I'd been so looking forward to going canyoning but I knew it was going to be absolutely freezing. We got picked up about half eight by a Canadian guy who had set up his business in Japan over ten years ago. For some reason, when western looking people speak Japanese, it seems so weird – but I'd love to learn to speak the language. We had a 20 minute drive to the Outdoor Centre, accompanied by Dave (the Canadian)'s two beautiful dogs – it's so nice to be able to stroke dogs without fear of rabies or fleas now!

At the outdoor centre we were kitted up with as much rubber as possible to protect us from the snow melt water that we were about to immerse ourselves in. So first rubber socks, then a rubber wetsuit, then a rubber jacket, then a waterproof hoody, then another wetsuit, a helmet, boots and rubber gloves – it was toastie in there...for the meantime. We got back in the van and after one of the bumpiest ten minute drives I've ever been in, we arrived at the top of a dirt track...in the middle of a forest... on a mountain... somewhere in Japan! Dave left us in the capable hands of Yasu, our guide, and got back in the van telling us he'd hopefully see us at the bottom, but if we were to see a bear in the meantime....just run! I knew there were bears in the north of Japan, but I hadn't realised they had them here in Hakuba too – suddenly, the psychedelic Japanese spiders seemed like friendly little bugs! My mind flashed back to the disclaimer we had signed before putting on our rubber attire – the final line of which had read something along the lines of... 'I fully understand that participating in this activity could result in death!'. I had questioned that final line before putting my signature on the line, but Dave had assured me that life was more dangerous in Tokyo and that was saying something, so I had signed my life away! During the Canyoning trip, Yasu did show us some bear prints in the muddy banks but assured us they were all hibernating now!!

We took a ten minute trek through the undergrowth and eventually climbed down a rope into the canyon. It was a beautiful day, clear blue skies, warm, but fresh and after that hike in all our gear, me and Kev were really looking forward to getting in the cold water! That excitement didn't last long! We were told we first had to check that our wetsuits floated so we had to lie down in the snow melt – the first snow melt of the year...lucky us! As soon as we got in the water, the icy liquid seeped into every part of our suits, but it was funny and we knew that once that first shock was over, the water would get insulated by our suits and we would warm up...that was the plan anyway.

So we started our descent down the canyon by which ever method suited best – abseiling, sliding down waterfalls, jumping off rocks, zip wiring over the edges...literally whichever means possible. The first slide was the hardest and it wasn't even that long. By this point we had soaked our bodies in the icy water, but we had yet to put our heads in. As we slid down the natural rock slide, we were plunged into a pool of sub zero (well, no, not sub zero because that would be a block of ice, but really cold!!) water. It was the cleanest water I've ever seen and looked like you could stick it in a bottle and sell it as chilled mineral water in the shops – but it's beauty was deceptive and that water was evil – it hit you like a brick wall and pierced every pore in your head with a sharp stabbing sensation which literally took your breathe away. I went down first and plummeted in at the bottom. As my head reached the surface of the water, all I could think was 'my god, I somehow have to put my thumbs up to tell Kev and Yasu that I was OK', but how the hell was I going to manage that when every part of my body was using all it's energy just to cope with the cold! I did manage to stick my thumbs up, even with a little smile, and I swam to the side to wait for Kev to follow.
We had successfully tackled the first water shoot but as soon as we got our breath back, we knew we were in for trouble as we couldn't even see the bottom of the next shoot – it was literally just the edge of a 10 meter cliff! It was great fun though and we continued right to the bottom of the canyon having the best time and taking some very unattractive photos along the way!

We got the the bottom and were gutted we weren't doing a whole day trip. The morning had gone too quick, and I really liked the sound of the 50m jump that you get to do if you do the whole day trip. We vowed that when we return to Japan we'll do the day trip for sure.

After changing out of our gear we were taken to a much needed Onsen (the hot spas they have here). It was scolding hot in the onsen and just what the doctor ordered – that morning had been like a temperature party in our bodies, from one extreme to the other, but we loved it and couldn't recommend it more. Kev even enjoyed his first Onsen, despite not looking forward to the prospect of sitting on a little stool, washing himself in front of other men and then prancing around butt naked between hot pools.

We went back to the hostel to lunch and then hired a couple of bikes to cycle out of some of the local viewpoints. They turned out to be miles away and I began to moan like a child, constantly asking, 'are we nearly there yet?' Kev said we would turn back but I insisted we carry on, simply because I didn't want him saying 'yeah, we only turned back because Rosy didn't want to carry on' (even though it was true that I didn't want to carry on). Kev insisted we turn back and I agreed on the proviso that it be noted that I had said we SHOULD carry on!! Sure enough though, we were about 5 minutes back up the hill and Kev said 'well, we only turned back because you were moaning so much', right, that was it, I started turning my bike around...we were going back! But eventually we agreed to head home (and I was very pleased, but don't tell Kev!)

The next day I was aching all over. Canyoning and cycling had used muscles that I don't think I'd ever used before. Somehow, Kev was fine, but every part of me hurt! Nevertheless, there was things to do and no time to moan. We had a lie in and then got on the train to Hotaka. There we hired a couple of bikes (again, I know!! I could barely sit down on mine and I seriously knew about every bump we went over) and cycled to Daio Wasabi Farm. This is the largest Wasabi farm in Japan and wasabi (for those who don't know) is Japanese horse radish. It was interesting to see what Wasabi actually looks like when it's not in a paste on the side of your plate of sushi or smothered over peas in a bowl by your beer in a London pub, and of course, I had to try to Wasabi Ice Cream. For those of you who don't have the opportunity to head to Hotaka and try Wasabi Ice Cream for yourself, there's a simple way you can experience this for yourself at home – simple look in your freezer and dig out a huge bowl of Vanilla Ice Cream (Dad, I'm expecting you to try this as I know you've always got Vanilla Ice Cream in the freezer!). Next, add to that bowl of Vanilla Ice Cream, I wanna say about 6 table spoons of horseradish sauce. Mix it together, put a little green food colouring in and then...enjoy....or not, as the case may be. It's not enjoyable in the slightest, but it had to be tried and while I was wandering around the farm eating my ice cream, some Japanese guy asked me 'how it felt', he could tell by the look on my face that this wasn't the culinary highlight of my trip to Japan!! They sold everything at the wasabi farm: wasabi Sake, wasabi wine, wasabi chocolate (Mum, I did think of you, but I couldn't do that to you!), everything. I settled on just buying some Wasabi pepper to sprinkle in small quantities on my fish back home, but that's as far as we went.

We headed back to the train station and got a train to Matsumoto. All we wanted to do here was see the castle, but actually when we got here we realised it's a pretty cool place and seems like a place that's worth spending a night or two (next time!). The castle was as lovely as all the pictures make out and I think I'm right in saying this is the biggest wooden castle in Japan. Inside you wander around the main tower right up to the 6th floor (although I only made it to the 4th floor – if you had seen the last two flights of steps you'd have known why – it was like being back in Cambodia with the dodgy steps, they were literally vertical!). Kev went up to the top and took some great pics. Then it was time to get the train back to the hostel for our last night in Hakuba. It was a sad night. Toshi and Meg, the couple who run the hostel in Hakuba are just the nicest people and we'd loved our time there and didn't want to leave – but at the same time, we knew we'd had the perfect amount of time there and it was right that we were moving on.

So the next morning it was an early start and a sad farewell to Hakuba as we hopped back on the train to Tokyo. At Matsumoto, yesterday, we had booked reserved seats on our long train to Tokyo, but once we got back to the hostel Kev realised he had misplaced them! We have discovered that if Kev doesn't put things in his money belt immediately, then he ends up putting them somewhere, and that somewhere isn't generally anywhere we can find again!! I'll forgive him for that little fault though as I think we've discovered many more Rosy-flaws than Kev-flaws along our travels so far!

Back in Tokyo, Shinjuku station, we put our bags in some lockers and headed to Harajuku for some shopping. I'd seen a ring there the week before but hadn't bought it as it was a bit pricey and we still had our whole time in Japan to go. But I'd not managed to find a nice ring elsewhere so we were hoping the ring would still be there, and sure enough it was. That was ring number 7 purchased.

Despite everyone saying you see the teenagers dressed up in the famous and crazy outfits on weekends in Harajuku, we actually saw more of them today that we had seen when we were last in Tokyo. They're amazing. They're outfits are awesome. Some look like Elizabethan or Victorian dolls and no-one bats an eyelid as they walk around...I'm all up for places where people can wear whatever they want and no-one cares, I think I'd fit in well here. And sure enough, I found some great shops and bought a great pair of shorts which I can't wait to get the opportunity to wear. Kev thinks they look more like a pair of pants!!

Having bored Kev thoroughly with shopping we picked up our rucksacks and headed back to the same hostel we had stayed at when we first arrived in Tokyo. We checked in and dumped our bags in the room and then ventured out to find a bar in Asakusa (which we recently learned is pronounced Asak-sa), which is the area we were staying. We ended up in a pub that we'd been to before, it's quite westernised and so it's easy to go inside. We knew that the westernised pubs are always more expensive, but some of the local places can be fairly intimidating. So we went in and had a beer and then decided to try our luck somewhere else. Just round the corner I spotted this funny little bar that looked like it was in a corrugated iron hut and inside everyone sat at tables which were made of beer crates – but full beer crates! Can you imagine having a pub in the UK where the tables are full beer crates and expect the clientèle not to just help themselves to your beer!! As we approached the door, so a drunken, old, Japanese bloke was coming out and he murmured to us 'where you from?', Kev said 'Scotland' which went completely over this guys head. Kev continued to try and explain, as did I, but this guy had no idea what we were on about. The bar tender came over and tried to explain to this guy, but this time in Japanese. It was a lost cause, but eventually this lovely friendly, old dunk man clicked and exclaimed 'Ah, Schotaland!!' - we all nodded and laughed and the old man stumbled off into the night – even the drunken bums are lovely here!! We went in and ordered a beer (which was about half the price it had been in the last pub!). I had a look at the menu and couldn't resist trying their Sashimi assortment (strips of raw fish – Tuna, Octopus and Sea Urchin – I didn't even know you could eat Sea Urchin!). Kev sampled a plate of Terriayki Chicken Skewers and the great food along with the great atmosphere in this trendy, little bar was just great and it made us reflect on how much we loved Japan and how sad we were that this was our last night. We had intended on having a really early night that night because we were getting up for the fish market first thing in the morning. However, we were having such a good time that we deicide to order another plate of chicken and fish and another beer each. Just as we were finishing that beer and preparing to head off for our early night, so the skies opened up and signalled to us that it just wasn't time for us to throw in the towel yet!! So we had another beer and waited for the rain to pass. We had such a good night and then wobbled back to the hostel.

The alarm went off at 4am the next morning and we crawled out of bed, heads pounding, and threw on clothes before creeping out into the dawn to catch the first tube of the day. The tube took us to Tsijumachisisho (that's totally wrong, but you get the idea) and here is where the world famous Tokyo fish market takes place. As soon as we got off the tube I knew we were in the right place as the smell was overwhelming. Suddenly the memory of that at delicious sushi I'd had the night before didn't seem so delicious as it swirled around with 5-hour-old-beer in my stomach! We walked into the market and it was just as I'd expected. It was manic, with crazy little trucks speeding around all over the place carrying enormous fish from lorries to auctions and back to lorries again. There were hundreds of stalls selling every thing the sea has to offer, from fish guts to whole Sea Urchins – I gazed at the spiky little things as their long lost friends churned around in my stomach!

We wandered over to watch the Tuna auction and I was slightly surprised at how small the Tuna were. I, of course, had looked at giant tuna pictures while working on Extreme Fishing 3, but Kev was amazed at the size of them. It was pretty gross and as the auction isn't officially open to tourists, we knew we were constantly in the way. It wasn't a nice feeling being an unwelcome visitor, stinking of fish and suffering with a hangover, all by 5 O'clock in the morning. One thing that did hit us though is that this is just one fish market in the world, which takes place almost every day, and sells an unbelievable amount of fish and those fish are so huge that they must take a fair while to grow to that size – it kind of hit me how big the ocean is if all those huge fish come out of it every single day – I know that sounds like a totally dumb thing to say, but the scale of it just hit me while we were there!

The original plan had been to go to one of the sushi stalls at the fish market and try the chef special platter featuring the best of the day's catch. But at that time in the morning, there was no way even I could go some sushi!! I'll save that for next time too! We got back on the tube and went back to the hostel to grab a few more hours sleep before we had to check out. We got another three hours sleep and woke again, still with a pounding head, and checked out. Our flight wasn't until the evening, so we stored our bags and went wandering around the local area. We didn't get to do much, except take paracetamol, drink coffee and eat burgers!! In Starbucks we saw this woman who was all dressed in the traditional kimono, but she wasn't a Geisha. She was beautiful though and despite having all the traditional dress on, she had died blonde hair, rode a little motorbike and was holding a Starbucks coffee cup – she just looked like a complete contrast all in one person, but she seemed lovely and smiled at me as I tried to take a photo. Other people were more bolshy and she posed for numerous photos with various tourists. I'm still not sure why some women wear the traditional outfits here on a daily basis – from my geisha experience, they're really not comfy, but it's so lovely to see them walking around everywhere.

After lunch the time had come for us to say our goodbyes to Japan and reluctantly we picked up our bags and took the train to the airport. We're not sure that anywhere else is going to live up to our high opinion of Japan and over our beers the night before we had insisted that we would look into studying Japanese when we get home – whether we actually do that remains to be seen! But I'm definitely going to get me a Japanese cook book. It was sad to leave Japan and know that we would no longer be eating with chopsticks, we would no longer need to struggle to get people to understand us and we would no longer be in the fashion capital (in my eyes) of the world!

But we had to get on our flight to Sydney and I was excited to get to Australia even though I was sad to leave Japan. The flight was fine and we slept most of the way. I watched 'The Hangover' 5 times (because I kept falling asleep during it) and it got funnier every time I watched it. When we landed in Sydney we were surprised that, even though everyone speaks our language here, it was actually harder to find our way to the correct bus than anywhere else we'd been to so far!! We ended up getting the train to the centre of Sydney and our hostel was a close walk. The hostel is huge and it's nice, but I feel about 10 years too old to be here!! The backpackers here are very different to the backpackers in Japan. They're much younger here and they're very loud!!

We couldn't check in straight away so we went for a wander and we were both ecstatic that I managed to get some hair dye and kev managed to get a hair cut. So far, I have to say, Sydney isn't filling us with love – but we've really not seen a lot yet, so we're reserving judgement. Tomorrow we'll have more energy to go visit things and of course we've got the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb thanks to Mum, Dad, Nes and Sarita. We're also hoping to get a ferry over to Manly as recommended by Mandy and Geoff from Halong Bay (in fact, Mandy and Geoff: when we flew into Sydney we had amazing views from the plane and we saw the national park and thought of you – the views were outstanding, it was really surreal and we were getting lower and lower and I thought at one point we were going to land in the water!!).

Enjoy the photos we put up of Japan while I ponder on the prospect of one more sleep in my twenties!! The big 3-0 is beckoning me and the next time I write on this blog, I shall be an grown up – in theory at least! xxx

Last Day in Kyoto

2009-10-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

Memoirs of a Geisha

2009-10-10T04:32:00.000-07:00

I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so!

2009-10-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

As planned, we woke up on Thursday and went straight to my appointment with the ladies who would pamper me and transform me into a Geisha. I went in and had to put on this pink robe which is a Geisha's undergarments, and these funny little socks with a separate bit for you big toe and another bit for the rest of your toes. I'm not really sure what the big toe has done to offend the other toes in Japanese culture but they obviously don't like each other and need to be kept apart! I went upstairs (making sure to go to the toilet first – once the outfit is on, there is no toilet activity for a while!) and chose my robe. Then it was straight into make-up where they literally paint your face. It feels so weird and at first the paint and masses of powder they cover you with feels horrible, but after a while I got used to the strange Japanese woman signing in the background and got used to the feeling of being pampered and I actually started to relax – imagine that – me relaxing!! I loved the red eyebrows they paint on and secretly wanted to adopt that look for my everyday life!! Then it's into the hair department to put on the wig – which weighs and absolute ton – you can't move your head because if you do, the wig will pull you down and you'd fall over!

Then into the dressing room to put on my robes. There's about a million layers and each one is placed on and then pulled so tightly you can barely breath. Between each layer of clothing there is a heap of weird padding – again, pulled so tightly you can't breath. Finally, by the time it's all on you can only take shallow breaths and walk in tiny little steps, keeping perfect posture! Then it was time for my photo shoot in which they place you in the most uncomfortable positions which make it even harder to breath! I had been so excited at the prospect of being a beautiful Geisha that I was ever so slightly disappointed to realised that I looked a little more like a man in drag than a beautiful Geisha, but it was fun all the same! I was glad when the photos were done and I went upstairs to take the outfit off. With every layer she took off I was able to breath a little bit more and with every knot she untied I felt relief! When she undid that final knot I felt my lungs fill with oxygen and it was beautiful!! I don't know how real Geisha's wear that all day every day, but fair play to them. While I was getting ready they showed a video of what a Geisha does – there was about 3 of them sat round a table with these 2 business men. They play like a pass the parcel game and they all giggle like children – it's odd and when you're wearing the outfit it makes you feel very childlike and they behave like children in a way so I think it's all very odd that rich businessmen pay so much money to do this, but hey ho, each to their own!

Once I'd taken my outfit off I had to go down to the wash room where a lady washes your back for you (I wasn't really comfortable with this bit of pampering to be honest!!) and then they wait for you to wash your face. They need to check you take it all off so that you don't go outside with the make-up on, they don't want it to ruin the image of the real Geisha's with tourists wandering round with the make-up on apparently.

So, back in normal clothes, we went for a Starbucks before hitting the first temple of the day. Kev had been wandering around, checking out where everything was while I was being a Geisha. So the first temple was nice and we saw this weird crane thing in a lake and massive, massive fish. The temples are nice here, but I prefer the grounds that they're set in to be honest. It's just like you would imagine Japan to be, beautiful trees and Zen like ornaments in the gardens.

We wandered up to another temple and I went inside, while Kev waited outside. Everywhere you go in Japan you need to take your shoes off, which is lovely, but gets very tiring after not long! Kev couldn't be bothered to keep taking his shoes off so I would go in to see if it was worth the effort first! Maybe we're just uncultured, but if I'm honest, the temples were beautiful inside, but once you've seen one, they start to get a bit samey- is that a terrible thing to say?! Outside we met a woman from England who was travelling for 6 months with her husband and two very young sons – I don't know how people can even consider travelling with children, it's hard enough just looking after ourselves, let alone anyone else!

Wandered on to yet another temple and didn't bother going inside, you had to pay and I really wasn't fussed with any more gold ornaments and smell of incense! And then on to more interesting things – we stopped for lunch!! We found this great little restaurant ,traditional Japanese style where you sit on the floor at this tiny little table. I loved it and was really comfy, but Kev and his big long Daddy-Long-Leg legs didn't enjoy it so much. It did make me laugh a lot to watch him constantly trying to get comfy, fighting around with a look of pain on his face – is it bad that I found that funny? He enjoyed the food however much more and he had a big tray of tempura while I had the best sushi I've had yet in Japan. When we left, we were half way down the street when the little old lady from the restaurant came literally running after us, all hunched over and waving my half drunk bottle of water at us! They're so lovely here, can you imagine anyone in the UK chasing you because you'd left your water behind.

We headed down to the manga museum, which turned out to be absolutely nothing like we had imagined. We'd thought it would be loads of huge manga pictures everywhere, but it turned out to be more like a library of manga books. There were some interesting things though like the first manga drawings back in like the 15^th century or something crazy like that. And I did learn that Japanese books are backwards, as in they start at the back and read forward – never knew that before.

By the time we came out of the museum it was getting dark and the castle that Kev had wanted to see was closed. So we started walking back via the streets that we had heard a good rock club/ live music venue called Taku Taku was on. We found the club and found out that the bands started at 7, it was now 6.45!! I was absolutely desperate for the toilet by now but didn't want to go into the club at that point because it was super expensive and I wanted to go and chance out of my sensible attire. As Kev has commented frequently during this trip, I am just like a new born baby in that I'm incredibly grumpy when I a) am hungry, b) am tired and c) when I need the toilet! So we literally walked the 25 min walk to the hostel in less that 15mins. I jumped in the shower and changed in record time and we were back out the door by ten past 7! Got back to the club at about 7.30 and paid our entrance fee (about £20, clubs are expensive here!). The band that we on were absolutely awesome, they were dressed in these 70s style, but uber cool suits and their guitar solos were to die for, they were just amazing and I loved every minute of it. The best thing though, was to watch the crowd, the Japanese love their live music and they don't have any hang ups about getting up and dancing like crazy!! Some go absolutely mad and others just have this funny little swaying from side to side thing going on, a dance that you couldn't get away with at a rock gig back home!! Unfortunately, that band finished and another one came on who were no where near as cool, but it was still a good experience watching them. The bands finished about 9pm and I went up to the desk to buy a CD of the first band. There I got chatting to the bass player and the singer and they were so appreciative of us coming to see them – they were just the nicest guys, in fact everyone in that club was so so lovely. It kind of reminded me of Tjs in Newport, but with nicer people!!

I sat back down and soon realised that a lot of people come to gigs on their own here and then they all just chat to each other. They soon included us in their conversation and made us feel so welcome – so welcome indeed that they hurried off to by us drinks. We didn't realise that the custom here is to always top up everyone else's drinks and then you wait for someone to top up your own - what a nice custom – but it was a little dangerous because they drink out of these tiny little glasses which hold about 4 gulps for me/ about one gulp for Kev – so of course, our glasses were constantly being filled! I just can't express how lovely everyone was there and the band came over to join us all and we just had a great night. No-one's English was very good, but that made it all the more fun, having drunken conversations via the medium of drawing pictures on scrap bits of paper!! After an absolutely fantastic night we stumbled back to the hostel, knowing that we were more than likely going to feel rough the next day!!

We were originally planning on doing a walking tour that following day, but we'd decided before going to sleep that it probably wasn't a good idea as we were fully intending on having a hang over instead!! Sure enough, I did feel a wee bit rough the next day, but there was no time to waste moping around the hostel, there was too much to see in Kyoto!

We walked to Macy D's to get a nutritious hang over cure and from there we went to Starbucks for a caffeine hit. From there we walked though Nikishi Market (I've probably spelt that wrong!). This is a food market where you can buy all the weird and wonderful things the Japanese eat – probably wasn't super wise of us to walk through with a hangover, but interesting all the same. From there went NiJoJo Castle which is this big wooden castle with a moat surrounding it, right in the middle of Kyoto. The grounds were absolutely beautiful and (as Kev couldn't be botehred to take his shoes off again) I went inside to see if it was worth a walk around the interior. It wasn't really. The floor was odd because it had been designed to squeak when you stepped on it, it was a warning that intruders were in the building, but in my fragile state it freaked me out and that along with the crowds was too much to handle!

We hopped on the tube to Kyoto train station where we booked our train tickets for the next day to the Hakuba Alps. Then we went to yet another temple. This one was nice but it was surrounded by pigeons and they were sitting on people's shoulder's and stuff, it was gross. Brian, you would have hated it!

From there we walked to, yep, you guessed it, another temple. This one was massive and was up really high. We had to walk through this enormous cemetery to get there and when we did, I was a bit templed out and couldn't be bothered to go inside. Typically, when Kev came out he told me it was the best temple we'd been to all day!! From there you could see all over the city, but I wasn't bothered, I'd seen enough temples to last me!! I was more interested in the lovely little street of shops just down the way from the temple. There we picked up a beautiful set of chopsticks which was on our list of things to buy here. I had no idea chopsticks could be so expensive, but they are!!

We then wandered back through Gion, passed one of those love hotels called The Love Inn – Kev thought this was hysterical!! I just think they're weird!! We picked up a bento box and then headed back to the hostel to do some washing, which was fun!

This morning, we got up and checked out and got on three different trains to get to the Hakuba Alps which is in the north, just near Nagano. It's beautiful here and looks like Scotland, well the mountains do (the houses don't) or it looks like how I would imagine Canada to look. It's really quiet here as well because we're out of season and the best thing about it is that it's fricking freezing!! It's so cold, I got excited when we went out to get some dinner and the thought of coming back to the hostel, having a hot bath and putting the heating on was just too much for me, I couldn't wait. The hostel is a lovely little home from home and the couple that run it are lovely. We've booked a canyoning trip for the day after tomorrow, which I think will probably be the coldest thing we've ever done!! It's basically jumping in lakes, gorge walking and generally getting pretty cold in some water, so that should be fun! Tomorrow we plan on going to see the snow monkeys in their natural hot pools (I cannot wait!!) and then to the Sake brewery to see how they make Sake.

We're in Hakuba for 4 nights which is the longest time we've stayed anywhere in the whole time we've been away, so we're pleased that it's a lovely hostel and there seems to be plenty to do here. On our last day here we're going to a Wasabi farm hopefully and to see Matsumoto Castle, before heading back to Tokyo for our last day in Japan – we'll definitely be sad to leave here and Ian, we're counting on you moving here so we can come back and visit!! Hope you love the photos xxx

Kyoto Day 1

2009-10-07T06:11:00.000-07:00