Woooooooooooooo!
Skydiving is awesome! I did it from 15000ft (The highest available) where you free fall for 60 seconds and in those 60 seconds travel 2 miles vertically down to earth where your new best friend pulls the parachute cord and you slow down to a glide down to earth. My new best friend was a guy called Adam who was from Liverpool and has been a sky dive person in America and Israel before working for Skydive Wanaka. (more…)
Woah, has it really been that long since the last post? My apologies to anyone that has been faithfully checking back every five minutes… no one? Good good.
Since I’ve done a fair bit in the last few weeks I’ll chuck it all into one post rather than making a post for each, coz I’d have to think of titles for each one, publish each on and put the picture links in each one so for my laziness’ sake here it goes…
Hope you have a good day out on the zimmer frame. Sorry I can’t be there but your present is in the post (i think) but might not turn up for a while…
So let me know what you had and what you all did. Happy Birthday.
Hi everyone.
Its around week 4 in Christchurch and we’ve moved into a house with four students so I’ve now got my own room and my own bed after staying in hostels (and cars) for nearly 3 months its nice. The house is really cold though coz its winter outside and theres no central heating inside(!). Our house mates are all ok and we’re getting on well which is good. The rent is cheap too.
I woke up this morning/afternoon to find a big empty space where the telly used to be because it actually belonged to one of the guys who used to live here and so he came and took it back. The girls aren’t too keen on our idea to get a new 32″ LCD though so thats a pity.
The next thing is to get a job to build the funds back up to travel around New Zealand and maybe fall out of a plane or off a bridge or 3…
Thats hello in Cook islands maori which is slightly different to New Zealand maori so there.
Rarotonga is like the main one of the cook islands and is where the government which only looks after a few matters before the New Zealand government takes control.
Getting here was a laugh, after spending 3 whole days on a bus we checked into a hotel in sydney and had a shower! Ahhhhhh. Then had a look around, we walked half way across the harbour bridge got a good view of the opera house (it looks a lot smaller in real life). We didn’t walk down to it though, it was miles away and we were naffed.
Then the flight took us back 20 hours so we’re now 10 hours behind you lot, actually 11 i think coz of daylight savings or whatever. So we landed ( a little to quick for my liking) and in the airport was a guy in grass skirt singing and playing the guitar ha ha. Apparently they give you those flower necklace things when you arrive and leave but we didnt get one so I will make sure I get one when we leave 
Its very relaxed here too, and to pass our test for a scooter licence we had to ride the scooter through town and back with the police man behind us but I set off, didnt stop for people on the pelican crossing and carried on, the rest of them in my group stopped though and then got caught in traffic, I thought I’d have to do it again but he gave us a pass he he. The scooters are cool and a good way to get around on the island, we did rent mountain bikes for a few days when we got here but coz most of the cars are old, you get a lung full of old exhaust fumes whenever you get overtaken.
We’ve been swimming in the lagoon right by our hostel too, well, we walked most of it, its really shallow, theres a few tiny islands off our beach so you can walk to them. We had a go at swimming though and I bashed my knee on a big lump of coral then stood on some which I had to pick out of my foot, add that to the bug bites, oh yeh and burning my leg on the exhaust of the scooter and you could say the island is leaving an impression on me.
I went to church last sunday too, (the advertised free lunch had nothing to do with persuading me to get up for it) it was interesting, most of it was in maori and they had a bit where the choir did some songs which were cool and the sermon was for about 10 minutes lol. In the hall where we had lunch, there were a school group over from new zealand and they did a performance for everyone which was cool too, and they finished on the hakka - wicked.
I’m taking pictures of the island and stuff but I havn’t got a way to upload any here so you’ll have to wait till im in new zealand which should be next thursday woo hoo!
Out.
Haloooo, its me again, well who else could it be eh?
I’m in Darwin this week which is the Northern Territories capital. Its very nice compared to some of the towns we’ve seen on the way up, there’s some stories to tell there! Its been an adventure travelling up the west coast and through the Norther Territory and Ive uploaded the photos see below. On the way up we’ve swam in the sea a few times and noticed the weather getting hotter and hotter, at the moment here in Darwin its about 20 something degrees at 00:45 and in the day its up to its 40’s, all the time! We’ve also slept in the car, avoided the sharks, sleep in the car, nearly swim with Dolphins (or at least be in the water knee deep and see them being fed), avoided stonefish (they’re really nasty!), sleep in the car, not get eaten by crocodiles that were only meters away, swim under waterfalls not get attacked by Aborigines and make it here to Darwin alive. Aaaaaah. All will be explained in more detail I promise.
Oh yeh, you know I said that we were going to get a flight from Darwin to Sydney? Scrap that, all the flights are booked up to all the major cities which left us wandering if we were going to make it to the cook islands and have had to resort to getting a bus! A bus! to take us from here, to Sydney via Alice Springs and Adelaide (See route) which is 4403 kilometres and will take us 3 days (fun) meaning that we’ll get to Sydney a day before our flight giving us a few hours to take as much of Sydney in as possible. However, because me and Jonny have worked out that it takes at least a week to suss out most of the cities we’ve sort of kinda roughly planned our next visit to Oz where we’ll cover the east coast.
Photo update:
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| Perth to Darwin |
Apologies for being so rubbish at blogging, I’ve got loads to tell you but no time to write it all up. I have written it down though so I wont forget and will try to blog it all when I can.
Basically over the last few days we came back from Albany and we’ve been to the Pinnacles and yesterday we went to the Wave Rock which was 360km east and its a crazy rock that looks like a wave funnily enough which was cool.
We’ve checked out now and are gonna start the next leg up to Darwin. We were originally going to get the Indian Pacific train from here (Perth) to Adelaide and then from there to Melbourne then Sydney but now we’re gonna drive up to Darwin with our new buddy Jelle (pronounced something like yeller, but I call him Jelly) which should work out cheaper and we get to see the north of Australia.
So, I’ll let you know how we get on, I don’t know when I’ll next get online, hopefully sooner rather than later.
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| The Wave Rock |
This is the
We reached Albany just before it was getting dark so by the time we got checked in to the hostel and moved our bags in the sun was 
going down and we had a look around. My first impressions of the town were good and were heightened after the pizza. We played some pool then back at the hostel for a bit then saw a listings sheet for the local cinema that was showing Transformers! This was a no-brainer so set off. The cinema didn’t look anything special, from the outside it looked like a fairly standard small town cinema and the foyer was only big enough for the sales desk thing, some sweet shelves and a small queue but the actual screen was actually quite big fair play so I was pleasantly surprised. Transformers is awesome by the way!
The Australians seem to like their films though, they’re very vocal when watching them, there were a lot of ‘yay’s and ‘boo’s at the appropriate parts which I found quite funny, back home people are usually quite quiet until there’s a funny bit worth laughing at.
We found this bar last night (Thurs 28/06) called Mustangs which is cool, it plays Fox sports on the projector and always has mountain biking videos playing on one of the TV screens. They were running a pool and table tennis competitions that night too, we joined the pool one which cost $5 and you get a free beer (which we actually worked out that it was cheaper to keep buying into the pool competition than to buy beers on their own - and you get a game of pool). Jonny was up first and did quite well against a guy called Ralph, he managed to get to the black but Ralph ended up getting it first. Then it was my go, I was playing a guy called Jerry. I lost, quite quickly actually, I started chatting to Jerry afterwards and he told me he knew he was going to win as soon as he saw the way I held the cue. He also told me that he’s been winning the pool competition there for 3 weeks and has won 491 competitions altogether… I should have know my chances were low when he pulled a nail file out of his pocket to smooth his cue tip before we started the game. Later on he pulled me aside and showed me a few things like how to hold the cue and a few other secrets I won’t share so that I can try and have some sort of advantage next time I play. We didn’t have time to join the table tennis one though which was a shame ‘coz I’m sure I could have won a few matches there after watching some of the other players, maybe next time. Jerry’s the guy in the read Coca Cola tshirt, and later on his hands and knees trying to break dance.
Well Its been a busy few days so havn’t had chance to blog and still havn’t really so thought I’d just do a little update with links to all pics from the last few days. Enjoy.
