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Well, after six months, 88 books, 5 travel guides, 14 free samples of travel guides (aren't Kindles great?), 21 flights (guilt), ridiculous numbers of hours on buses and trains, too many mosquito bites, far too many ants in the bed and, yes Phili, my toothbrush, via LA, Heathrow and an excellent hen party, I arrived home.

No leaves left!

After leaving the palm trees and wide roads of L.A. it has taken me 2 weeks to be used enough to being home to write this blog. First I was faced with almost complete mist and a striking lack of leaves on the trees (this doesn't normally happen all at once), then persistent rain, followed by snow, beautiful clear skies and now we're on to rain and hail. Quite a change to most of my trip and unfortunately the mosquito bites are lasting longer than the tan!

Definitely a different season than when I left if the boat's out the water

 

Although Spring seems to be emerging

It is surprising how quickly I've got used to it all though, I'm struggling to remember the beginning of the trip, Bangkok feels an awfully long time ago, which I suppose it was. Still, two weeks on and I have some form of employment sorted, managed to see a good number of friends and family, have become accustomed to putting on at least four layers in the morning and have my list of 'Places to see next' written up. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my last six months of adventures, I am very grateful to all those who have put me up or bought me a meal throughout the trip and am looking forward to seeing what happens next. Fortunately, I will not need to update you through the internet, please come and see me in West Meon instead!

Wedding preparations are definitely more advanced - practice run with the flowers

Bula!

Absolutely EVERYWHERE you go in Fiji it is 'Bula! Bula! Bula!'. It technically means Life! but is used for all possible greetings. On stepping off the plane I was greeted with cries of this, men in sarongs and flowers, singing and a ton of rain. The smell really reminded me of South East Asia - tropical, wet, hot and it's acceptable for strangers to ask your age, marital status or out for dinner. Although actually it's a bit cooler here in Fiji, unlike the sea temperature which ridiculous. It's above 30 degrees, it's like a cup of tea!

My initial plan was to spend a few days in the Yasawa Islands (hammocks, coral, beach) and then two days a little bit inland (hills, jungle). This did eventually happen but not at all to plan. After arriving in the evening and spending the night, I was up bright and early for the boat trip out to the islands. Quite a long bus journey, quite a busy port, THREE HOURS of sitting on the actual boat while 'the engineers addressed a problem' and then another hour and a half back in the port deciding what to do with us. It was pouring with rain so I knew the islands wouldn't be looking their best, and I'm on Fiji time, who cares? The British couple next to me cared A LOT. It was amazing, they just demanded to use every other boat in the marina. Also felt quite bad for the honeymooning couple I had met on the plane...

Anyway, a day wasted sent off to a dodgy hotel in Nadi where, due to the rain, we watched 'The Impossible'. It's a good film but Fiji is not at all the place to watch it, given it's about the 2004 tsunami. Anyway, 24 hours later and back to Denerau Port and then a 5 and a half hour journey to Blue Lagoon Resort in Nacula. Credit to the boat company, they managed to fly out an engine part from New Zealand and fix it during that time.

By this point, I was expecting quite a lot from this island, after the effort to get there. Fortunately, it utterly lived up to it. There were flowers on my bed when I arrived, immediately given juice and amazing Fijian food the whole stay (influenced by Indian, lots of fish, lots of doughnut like things). We had the local choir come and sing to us, visited the local bakery and had a surreal cup of tea and cake on a tropical island (cooked in a tiny hut of corrugated iron as the recent cyclone had destroyed it) and, as the next two days were beautiful weather, did lots of swimming and snorkelling in the amazingly warm sea. There was masses and masses of coral of various colours and more variety in fish than in Borneo (although no turtles), weird sea slugs, squid and blue starfish that look like they've collapsed in the most uncomfortable places. I also discovered pagoo when walking on the beach! Pagoos are hermit crabs and, later that day, we enjoyed crab racing championships. Unfortunately, despite being very carefully picked, my crab did not do very well... The only downside, other than the long boat journey, was the numbers of mozzies - bites everywhere including the soles of my feet (I now know what you're talking about, Emma).

After another epic boat trip and weird taxi ride, I ended up in Stoney Creek up in the mountains. Here the mozzies were even worse and seemed to be 24 hour mozzies. In fact, I think I've given myself a smoker's cough by never being very far from the lit anti-mozzie coils. The lady there also insisted on getting me lemon for my 'huge, ugly bites' (her words, not mine), not sure it helped as she also said baking soda or toothpaste would work which confused my understanding of neutralisation. Slightly odd place, an inordinate number of dogs, particularly in the ladies' loo (?). If I were to redo the trip to Fiji, I think I would spend longer on the island and less long in the hills as it's a bit further to get to things to do, but I'm glad I saw some of the jungle, the people with machetes and the hills looking really very green and beautiful. Photos to be added!

Then I began my epic trip home. Arriving slightly later at the airport than either me or the Canadian girl I was going with would have preferred, on insistence from the lady at the hotel, I found myself in amusing airport story number 4, 5? Can't remember what I'm up to. I thought I'd been really on the ball and looked up if I need a visa or anything to travel into the US, as I'm spending a night in L.A. on my way home. You don't need a visa but you do need an ESTA form completed online 72 hours before you fly. I had 1 hour and 8 minutes before I flew. Fijian air staff were very helpful and gave me internet access but made it clear I only had ten minutes and they couldn't guarantee anything. I was getting increasingly sweaty but, after 6 months of travelling, have all my passport and credit card numbers and expiry dates in my head and the lady actually said 'woah, that was really fast'. Then it took an anxious 90 seconds to process and I was allowed through - phew! I even had time to exchange my Fijian money.

It was, however, a very gruelling flight, with some very geographically confused Americans who couldn't believe that it made any sense at all to fly from Fiji to the UK via America. I tried to explain that it's about equidistant either way because, you know, the earth is spherical, but I didn't get very far. Oh well, they were only teachers. It was the lack of sleep, rather than their lack of understanding that was gruelling, to clarify. Arriving in L.A. to a shuttle bus driver who just kept shouting 'youngster!' at me and terrorising anyone under the age of 8 by shouting 'HELLO, LITTLE ONES!' out the window as he drove along was a bit of a shock, but he showed me the sights. The really important ones, like the hotel where Whitney Houston died and some truly horrendous houses in Beverly Hills with disproportionate pillars and windows. Anyway, a night on Hollywood Boulevard and then back to the airport for another 10+ hour flight.

Leaving NZ :(

Continuing northwards I made my way to Picton, right on the Marlborough Sounds. On arrival I was met with sunshine and a nice seaside town and proceded to sunbathe and swim in the sea. All was looking well for my walk along some of the Qyeen Charlotte Track the next day. What I was actually faced with was an awful lot of low cloud. Reminiscent of failing to see Mt Kinabalu, unable to see dolphins at Akaroa, not allowed to kayak Mt Cook etc etc.

However, after more dolphins and a boat ride with some mentalists who are walking the entirety of New Zealand (one was just starting his third pair of shoes after completing the North Island) I got dropped off at a Motuara Island for 90 minutes. This is one of a number of islands where they have worked and continue to work hard to eliminate all the introduced mammals (there is only one native NZ mammal, a type of bat) so that native plants and birds can flourish. Motuara Island makes a very good case for this, there were lots of Little Penguins in their nesting boxes looking quite unattractive in between feather stages, and I saw a bell bird, masses of saddlebacks, a grey warbler and a few grey robins. I also saw some wetas, but they're less attractive. I even managed to get some pictures of the saddlebacks. You don't need to be in NZ very long to hear an awful lot of conservation preaching and to get really quite excited about native birds. As I spotted them on my own this was probably at least as exciting as the whale but I think you probably had to be there... After all this excitement, three of us were waiting to be picked up and a Little Penguin (who should really have been asleep) just waddled out right in front of us! Then a boat load of about 40 people arrived and somewhat ruined it all...

I then caught the boat briefly across the water and walked along some of the track. There was noticeably less bird song and bird life, other than wekas, which are native and steal things (!). Still very much clouded over but the cloud had lifted a bit so there were some good views of the sound.

From Picton I headed to Nelson. Nelson is quite a cool town, it is virtually entirely surrounded by National Parks and has a lot of nice older houses and quite a funky modern cathedral. It is full of streets named after Trafalgar related people/ships. It is also the geographical centre of New Zealand. Unfortunately I didn't have time to go to all the surrounding National Parks, but I did go to Abel Tasman. It was beautiful weather and entirely lived up to the hype. I did some kayaking along the coast which is bright green with masses and masses of small beaches (fortunately quite empty as the summer holidays have finished) and the most ridiculous greeny turquoise clear water. I kayaked, did a small walk and sat/swam at the beach. I could not get over how like the postcards it looked!

From there I spent a day on buses and a ferry (more dolphins) to Wellington and a night on a bus to Auckland. Having spent the whole trip thinking Kiwis must be HORRIFIED at the rudeness of our bus drivers when they come to the UK compared to in NZ, this last bus journey was driven by the grumpiest, rudest bus driver I've ever met! I'm now using up my New Zealand coins in Auckland airport about to head to Fiji!

Photos to come, internet access a bit limited on islands in Fiji...

Heading northwards

After a beautiful break in Wanaka and proving that I still can't play pool, I started my generally northerly direction to Mt Cook. I was lucky enough to see Mt Cook on a beautiful day. There is a village there with no supermarket, 130 residents and the only school in a National Park in NZ. The mountain itself is pretty hairy, it shrunk by 10m in the early 90s as a massive rock/ice fall meant a whole chunk off the top was lost. There is a quite a heavy Edmund Hillary influence here, as he climbed it and was associated strongly with the village.

The Village 

Unfortunately, all I did hear was walk and see how lovely a spot it is (it was actually really very hot, too), which was spectacular but I had really wanted to kayak on the lake there at the bottom of the Tasman Glacier but it was too windy! Very disappointed, but it has given me an excuse to come back (as if I need one).

What I didn't get to do...

From Mt Cook I went to Tekapo, which is a bit like Wanaka, although smaller, just a lovely place to be! More mountains, lakes and views. The night sky is also meant to be particularly impressive here, although I was looking at it with two people who now live in Shanghai, so they were a little more impressed having hardly seen a star since they were in the UK... There is also a famous church on the edge of the lake, the most photographed church in New Zealand, where lots of people return to to get married. When I was there, my photos were FULL of coaches of tours there to take pictures, they even stood around and photographed the wedding party that emerged from the church! There is a pretty amazing view from behind the altar though; it is quite a beautiful church.

Lots of photos....

Pretty spectacular view

It really is this turquoise, a result of the rock flour

Then from Tekapo I caught the bus up to Christchurch where I stayed with some family friends. They were very generous and live in a lovely house, which was a perfect antidote to buses and hostels. They also told me more about the earthquakes and pointed out where the city had looked different. It was really pretty sobering and shocking.

From Christchurch I also went to Akaroa, which is where a French community settled. As such, there are two centres to the small town, one where the French were, and one where the British were. There are lots of twee Frenchisms and all the roads have French names. It is a nice little seaside town but is famous for its beautiful surroundings and for having lots of the rarest and smallest dolphin, the Hector Dolphin. Unfortunately, due to the bad weather and my bad luck, it didn't look quite as spectacular as it normally does, I couldn't go on a trip to see the dolphins but if I had booked with the company I nearly did then I would have, oh those $2 were not worth it... However, another place to return to perhaps, and still a lovely little town. I have seen dolphins quite a lot before and I was on my way to Kaikoura, marine life central...

Kaikoura is particularly good for marine life due to there being a shelf where the sea floor drops from 100m to 900m and then continues to drop further. This is particularly good for sperm whales, amongst other things. This part of the south island, including around Akaroa and presumably further north as well, whilst in sight of mountains is a little more habitable and therefore the Maori had and have a stronger presence here than further south or west. In the 1980s they totally transformed the economy of the town by deciding to take advantage of the vast amount of marine life here. It is now a very nice coastal town, I've really quite enjoyed wandering around it.

Hector dolphins, hurrah!

The male Hector dolphin is much smaller than the female....

I saw this!

I didn't get this view...

I also, of course, felt I should try and see a whale. It was quite a slick operation, they have amazing ways of tracking whales. At first I was a bit annoyed that we were racing past albatrosses (yes, they were definitely albatrosses, despite looking a little gull-like) and dusky dolphins without commenting on them or pausing at all. After we saw the whale though, we then looked at the other sea life. They track the whale and find it in its ten minutes of getting rid of carbon dioxide etc. It just sits at the surface puffing, and we lie right alongside it and then get to watch it dive down, always with the tail flick. It was very exciting, but still not quite as cool as when whales have come up to us in the past, rather than going through a big rigmarole of finding them...  Also my enjoyment marginally tempered by the number of people vomiting in bags. HOWEVER, I should not complain, especially as we then saw lots of albatrosses and some Hector dolphins, the super rare and small ones! They are very close into shore and really very small. They also are much less showy that the Dusky ones, who were flirting and leaping, and are normally shy so we were lucky to see them, hurrah!

Still very excited by these

Enormous

Showing off dusky dolphins

Dashing around the South Island

Due to lack of time and generally extending my stay in almost every other country, I am now quite pushed for time in New Zealand. As ever, I am trying to get that elusive balance between seeing things I want to see and not becoming too exhausted. I have no idea if I am managing it, but I am seeing some cool things that I very much wanted to see. This means that this blog will suddenly seem even more crammed but actually amidst all that is described is a significant amount of time on buses. Normally with some pretty spectacular views, most of which I am missing by being asleep.

Having made the mental journey to Milford Sound and back I spent a bit longer in Queenstown. I actually liked it more than I expected to, it's not that busy and is very beautifully placed with lake and mountains etc. I also got to see a kiwi here, which was actually much more fun than I expected. It wasn't in the wild or anything exciting, I visited the Wildlife Conservation place and saw, amongst other things, four kiwis in the nocturnal house. They are much bigger than I thought, move much more quickly and have whiskers! I think I might have picked them for my national icon... Or maybe the absolutely huge wood pigeons, of which I have now seen a lot in the mountains.

You shouldn't take photos of kiwi, they live in the dark and are shy and easily startled!

Huge

I then went to Arrowtown, which is a small town close to Queenstown that grew up as a gold mining area. It is slightly too quaint and twee but quite interesting to see. The Maori generally seem to have had less settlements in the South Island than the north, but they did hunt and look for greenstone in the south. They also named everything and thought the Mountains were sacred. They did know about gold, but didn't think it was valuable as it was so soft, but then took advantage of Europeans finding it valuable when they showed up. There was also a huge Chinese community here, as they were invited from Victoria, Australia to come and mine once mining gold picked up on the West Coast and there weren't enough people in Arrowtown. Quite striking that it was a rough life all round though, I wouldn't have enjoyed being a pioneer here so much...

Arrowtown

From Queenstown I made another epic bus journey to Fox Glacier. Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers are unusual in that they come down not only close to sea level but also into temperate rainforest. Franz has been receding for a long time and is now only accessible by helicopter, yet for some reason inexplicably more popular, Fox was actually at its lowest in 1983, grew a lot until 1998 and is now receding again. I did an all day walk which involved walking up to the glacier through the temperate rainforest, donning crampons (!) and walking around very close to crevasses and the like, dropping rocks down small holes to hear them falling for a good 6 seconds and crawling through tunnels posing for pictures. It was quite hard work but really good fun. There was a good group of us and a good guide who kept telling horror stories really quite casually (see http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2011/10/27/spectacular-rockfall-video-on-the-franz-josef-glacier-a-lucky-escape-for-a-tour-party/). He showed us the skull of a tahr, which I have just had to google to check actually exists, I thought it might be one those 'a haggis is a three legged animal in Scotland' stories...

Fox Glacier

From Fox, where it was really quite chilly and merino layers were worn, I went on to Wanaka. Wanaka is a little like Queenstown only smaller, more relaxed and, today, 26 degrees. Having somehow managed plus 40 degrees I am now inside because it's too hot outside! Very beautiful though and also a pretty spectacular journey. If anyone is planning a trip, I wish I had camped at Lake Hawea, very deserted, beautiful clear water and generally an amazing location!

Lake Wanaka

Wanaka

Lake Hawea

Food, Kauri, Fiords

On leaving the boat (and the holding tank, phew), we invested some time in kiwi food, caves and finally trees. This did not include L&P lemon drink, pavlova or milk, but rather included lamb, duck, beef, venison, fish, kumara (sort of sweet potato) and green lipped mussels.

There are several very touristy caves in New Zealand, Waitomo and Te Anau, which are famous for their glow worms and you can watch a concert there, travel on a boat, black water raft etc. Near where we were staying, though, were the Abbey caves, where you follow a path, take a torch and scramble. This is exactly what we did and saw not only lots of very beautiful glow worms but also a big eel quite a long way in land in the cave. EUGH. Still, it was very scrambly and we were really quite heroic.

The trees were kauri trees, which are native to New Zealand particularly in the Northland. They grow incredibly straight and tall, have no knots in them as the branch pulls the knot out with it and therefore provide excellent timber. Thus, they are running out and you can no longer cut them down, even if they are damaging your house you still need permission from the local Iwi (Maori tribe) to do so. We explored these firstly through the Kauri Museum, which is run by very enthusiastic volunteers and therefore crammed full of ridiculous amounts of things. Displays full of chain saws, for example, cabinets of irons, a kauri bath (which was quite cool) and a lot of lighthouses made out of kauri gum. Secondly, and more enjoyably, we went for a walk in the Waipoua Forest and saw some kauri for ourselves.

Well fed and familiar with trees, my parents set off on their way back home and I headed quite far down the South Island to Queenstown. Before I arrived, they had had ten days of 30 degrees, I arrived and the visibility was appalling, it was less than ten degrees, very wet and the hills were getting a new dusting of snow, which is rare for summer. It all looked and felt a bit Scottish and the actually very beautiful lake was really quite unappealing.

My first day was spent travelling to Milford Sound. This did involve an enormous amount of time on a bus which I actually didn't mind. The landscape really did change a lot, from the hills and mountains around Queenstown, to Southland landscape which is greener, flatter and very much farm country, to Fiordland National Park, which is just spectacular. Milford Sound itself was very beautiful, I was very lucky with the weather and saw one lone dolphin and lots of seals. It is quite striking how steep the mountains around it are and how deep and clear the water is.

The Maori call it 'upstanding masculinity', perhaps a generously polite translation?

 I was actually more impressed with the bus journey through Fiordland, though. We drove along several glacier made valleys with really remarkable views and heard lots of impressive avalanche stories. Even the road there is quite remarkable, completed with a tunnel in the thirties (a clearly not recently built tunnel...) and often closed in the winter. One valley had a very flat bottom where oxbow lakes had been formed (very exciting, only the second time I have seen one of those, despite learning about them in years 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9) which were so still that there were beautiful reflections of the mountains in them. There was also 'the chasm', where limestone had been worn away more than the granite and quartz and a normal looking river suddenly dropped into this chasm in the ground. I think I actually preferred the remarkably clear and icy bluey green rivers in the fiordland to the fiord itself. Which is not to say that the fiord wasn't spectacular, it was more impressive than any I'd seen in Norway but, unfortunately, it was still comparable to Norway. A really good day out though. I also saw a couple of kea, cocky and confident mountain parrots.

Mirror Lakes

Mirror Lakes

Fiordland National Park

Kea

 I'm disappointed I'm unable to load up some of my own photos, it really did look like this!

Shit Happens

This week was spent on 'Esprit', a Noelex 30, in the Bay of Islands. Initially, we were all very struck by how spacious she is compared to a VW bus! Unfortunately the overriding memory, however, is going to be of the malfunctioning loo. After calling out the charter company who appeared to have fixed it, we found that it the holding tank still need to be emptied by hand. Daddy worked at the shitface whilst we chatted shit, shit stirred and generally had fun by the shit load on deck. For an hour and a half. The only moment we were glad for the consistently strong easterlies that we had all week. I hate holding tanks. (There was also some engine trouble but we didn't really use that enough for it to make a big impression!)

Bay of Islands

 That unpleasantness aside it was a very good week! The water is exceptionally clear so we did a lot of swimming and enjoyed the turquoise water.

Really extraordinary sea colour

We also got a visit from a pod of orcas. That includes an ENORMOUS bull orca, that was really quite intimidating and probably about nine females and calves. None of us had ever seen them before and they were really rather close! Two of us went out in the dinghy (feeling somewhat vulnerable) and were a matter of feet away from them at their eye level, they move quite quickly too, and one of us stayed on board to take some photos. We saw one eating a sting ray and one showed off with its tail. All round very exciting and we got a much better view then those who had paid to go on a dolphins cruise! We didn't see any other dolphins, which is unusual, possibly due to the orcas, which eat their babies, and possibly due to persistent swell. We did hear some kiwis, probably, but not close enough to be tempted to go rowing around looking for them in the dark.

Pod!

Tail

This was us, except with more orca and a far less substantial and smaller boat!

Bay of Islands included a visit to Russell, once the capital of New Zealand. It had some quite nice old buildings, particularly the church, and a good museum. It once was known as 'the hell of the Pacific' and Darwin claimed I was filled with e 'refuse of society' but I can assure you it has improved since then! A very enjoyable meal in the oldest restaurant in NZ (1847) although slightly different to eating in the oldest pub in England (793).

Oldest restaurant in NZ at the far end

Oldest church in NZ

We also visited Waitangi where the treaty was signed between the British and tribe chiefs in 1840, handing over their sovereignty. Although, due to issues of translation, this treaty is still very much in dispute. It was interesting to learn about and, particularly, to see the enormous war canoe that is there, made from a single tree trunk. We are just missing Waitangi celebrations (a public holiday here) on 5th and 6th where we could have seen some canoes in use amongst other things....

European Treaty House

All round a very successful trip and the loo didn't quite define it, honestly.

Massive bull orca

Unfortunately not able to plug into my own photos (which show how close the orcas were!) but I have added some to give you the idea...