The high life

In our Lonely Planet guide book the main thing they advise you against in La Paz is to share a taxi with a stranger. They could be in cahoots with the driver, take you down an alley and force you to extract cash from your person and your bank account. So, the first thing we do is get into a taxi with a stranger. Obviously. It's 3am and I'm totally disorientated. It feels like the plane hasn't fully landed yet. It's also pretty darn cold. The taxi ride turns out ok and the Bolivian with us tells us how much of a dangerous area the airport is located in, which is why he shared the taxi with us.
At night the place looks pretty strange. The airport is much higher than the city itself so you descend sharply. The lights from the city look good spread out all amongst large mountains, it does seem an odd place to inhabit though.
We get to our hostel and eventually a decrepid old guy answers the door to let us in. Our room is basic. Also, handily enough, it's right next to the tiny living room so if anybody even so much as whispers outside you can hear them. Thankfully whispering wasn't needed as at 6am the tv was on soo loud it would prove ineffective.
I have a terrible headache and my brain feels like it's bleeding internally. This was not a nice place.
Let's have a look round.
Walking the streets you instantly realise the massive difference in population here. Over 70% of people here are of indeginous descent and certainly have a different look to their Spanish conquorers. There's also I high amount of traditional dress going on. Lots of women wear multi-coloured skirts and have a black bowler hat sitting atop their heads. They're usually carrying some large swath of multi-coloured material with varying contents within. Ranging from potatoes and fruit to clothes and babies. The place is pretty dirty and run down with seemingly no redeeming features. The locals aren't too concerned about us at least. We'd been told good things about Bolivia and that it's a great experience but so far the people have been miserable and unfriendly towards us. Not my kind of experience.
The air definitely feels thinner here and it's much harder to breath and move around. I really don't want to do anything at all other than sleep. It's supposed to take at least a couple of days to acclimatise, I don't want to stay that long.
A lot of the people probably haven't changed much in thousands of years here and that's also probably due to the fact that why would the Spanish be very interested in inhabiting such a high place? It seems odd that anyone would choose to live this high up. The surrounding mountains may look good but in general the place is a hole. Unemployment is rife too. I can't understand why anyone would willing come to live here. I'm begining to think why I willingly came here.
There's one street that has a couple of cafes that look almost ok. After avoiding food poisoning we head back to our hovel. Oh great, 3 cheery looking Irish are watching the Green Mile on tv at full blast. I fall asleep to the screams of a guy being burnt alive. Oh the joy.
That's it. I give in. That morning we leave and pay up. Ok the place was incredibly cheap, around three pounds each but I rather stay somewhere I can get some rest. We check into a lovely colonial three star hotel. Far better. From the Sheraton, to a hovel, to this happy medium. Way more expensive but worth it.
The streets near our new place are slightly improved steep cobbled affairs but still it's an absolute wrench walking anywhere.
One thing that does grate walking round is th amount of tourists taking photos of cute Bolivian children. Kids hang around waiting to be photographed for the equivalent of about 15p. Quite often they never get it and no matter how intrusive some photographers were they would not part with cash. It was sad.
We hit the net as we're short of something to do and I feel ropey as hell. This is when an american I'd avoided earlier in the day came in. He asked me if I'd been in jail with him recently. He then began going into some bull story about having nowhere to stay before I stopped him dead, 'You want money don't ya?'. 'Yes', he replied. With a wad of cash in my pocket I gave him an honest looking answer,'Sorry mate but I only carry exactly what I need when I go out'. I think if they're willing to lie to me then I have no problem in returning the favour.
I need to get out of here. Next day we leave for the small town of Copacabana on the shores of one of the biggest and highest lakes in the world, Lake Titicaca. Surely that must be better than the big smoke of La Paz. What? It's actually higher in Copacabana than La Paz? What am I doing here?

A day in Lima

Due to one of our flights being non-existent we get to have a look around Lima for the day whilst stopping at the 5-star Sheraton Hotel. One thing is for sure, the food here is unbelievably good. As all meals are paid for by LAN Peru we absolutely gorge ourselves on everything possible. The best buffet I've ever had. I think I was actually making myself ill by eating soo much but I soldiered on. A Peruvian favourite is Ceviche. It's raw fish in lemon and chili, very nice. I thought if I was going to have it then best to get it from somewhere I'm less likely to throw my internal organs out at. We also got a complimentary Pisco Sour, the national drink of Peru. It contains Pisco, lime and beaten raw egg white. This may sound awful but it's actually pretty good.
Lima, however, is not. The Sheraton is in the grey and faded looking downtown area of Lima. We soon realise why there's a free bus from the hotel to the more upmarket Miraflores area, and why everyone who leaves the hotel get's straight into a taxi. From the taxi to the hotel we passed many a crumbling box-like building but walking around is worse. It reminds me of China a bit as people are staring at us again. It feels a bit uneasy to walk about. Unemployment is very high here and it seems people just wander the streets in search of something to do. Almost immediately we see some mentalist shouting and attempting to chew another guy's shoulder. 'Excellent', I thought.
There are some decent looking buildings but it just feels like we're on show walking about here. We find refuge on a set of stairs for a while. A Peruvian lady begins to chat to us and for once it's not some ploy for us to buy something. She tells us how it's a bit unsafe around the center and Miraflores is a much better area. She often sees tourists bags go into the hands of Peruvians on many of the buses too. I really can't be bothered being in another dodgepot town. At least Rio had some beauty about it.
The Sheraton had a swimming pool, sauna, gym, a casino and a shopping arcade. I now see why, you wouldn't want to leave!
Just stuffing my face was enough for the day. We even ate off silver platters for lunch. Aswell as chicken that was served to us on a proper sword!
After spotting more blokes pissing against trees and the cold begin to set in we head back to stuff ourselves and prepare for the late night flight to La Paz.
This may be the capital of Peru but I sure hope it's not the best Peru has to offer or these next few weeks will be grim indeed. Miraflores is supposed to be a much improved area and we'll find that out upon our return. For now things aren't looking great.
I was not looking forward to the next part of the trip much either. La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The highest capital in the world at 3800 metres above sea level. We land at 3am, this in itself is not something to look forward to, and the altitude is supposed to make you feel pretty awful. Just how awful I didn't know.

More sugar

After hearing about the Finnish couple getting robbed we were a bit wary the next day. Luckily for them they didn't have much taken, Hannu's glasses being the most important and most useless to the thief. Saying that I doubt a Brazilian mugger will find much use with an autobiography of Fidel Castro written in Finnish! They also told us how much of a joke the police were. They knew there was nothing they could do but it was comical nontheless. When they found out the couple were from Finland they instantly brought up pictures of Finnish chicks on the internet to show Hannu. Amusing but not greatly helpful.
That day we walked half an hour or so to the Sugar Loaf mountain with the Aussie we'd met, Kai. After the Finnish incident we were a bit spooked so left our cameras at the hostel. When we got there of course everyone had really expensive cameras out. Ah well.
Great views from the top, once we took two high cable cars to get there. Not my favourite mode of transport. Down at the bottom was a nice small beach but unfortunately the water had rubbish in it so we didn't venture in. The other day at Ipanema the water was absolutely freezing anyway.
We strolled around a nice area looking for a beach we'd seen on the map. After shortly visiting a grotty looking one we moved on and soon realised that the good looking beach was within an army base. An army base with a beach, that's Brazil for you. One thing of note about Brazilian beaches is that they're not topless like in Spain, for instance. The Brazilians seem to counter this by wearing swimsuits that resemble pieces of illuminous string and nothing more. There really should be a law in place, or somekind of judge, to determine who is allowed to wear such garments though.
Another good meal at one of the popular weigh food places was had with the Finns and Kai that night. The next day we spent mainly on the local buses. Getting to the bus station to buy Sao Paulo tickets, situated right near a favella, was a bit dodgy but ok. Some areas in Rio are plain disgusting. Most areas are just simply run down.
We'd heard about a favella tour that tourists go on, we didn't but was told about it. They have electricity and even internet cafes in the favellas, mainly because they tap into the electric cables running above. There also used to be a Macdonalds in one favella but it got looted soo badly that they pulled out. It's now a Bob's Burger, a Brazilian chain. The whole favella in question is run by one drug baron. The Police don't enter, they just sit around the edge with machine guns in hand. Inside the favella drug markets are common. A woman at our hostel told us of drug stalls selling bags of cocaine the size of pillows. Tourists instantly get busted once they leave apparently.
In the afternoon us and Kai went to a tremendously long beach an hour out from Botofogo, where we were staying. It was more upmarket and a lot tidier than Ipanema or Copacabana. The rip was ferocious though. We swam in the slightly warmer water but it was an immense struggle just to try and get back to shore, about 5 metres away. Ridiculous. Needless to say after that a life guard put up danger signs. Nice.
A caiphrinia by the beach as the sun went down finished off the day nicely. But we still had to get back. The bus driving in Rio is the worst I've ever experienced. Horrendous does't even come close. They floor it on the open road overtaking pretty much everything and yanking the bus round bends like they're driving a Mini. When we hit very heavy traffic they constantly rev the engine and lurch forward every few seconds at full pelt just to get a few metres further down the road. And gears, well, I really don't know if anyone showed these guys how they work. After about 2 and a half hours we got back feeling sick and with neck ache!
Rio was made good because of the good people we met, making it much safer to get out and about. The Brazilians are fairly friendly and the beaches are quite decent and a good respite from the grime of the city. The main centro is quite flash, mainly business and shops orientated but it's not far from the contrast of the ramshackle favellas. The gap between living standards is enormous. Where we stayed felt safe enough but other areas had an air of something bad could happen and I didn't like it at all. I don't want to feel like I need to be thinking about my posessions or cash all the time, you can't relax.
All in all Rio is a very beautiful and a very ugly place. I'm glad I've been but I can't see me being in a rush to return. There are far better places to be that are far safer and more enjoyable, Buenos Aires beats it hands down. Out of Brazil we go, after another longish bus ride to Sao Paulo. About 8 hours or so, made slower due to a couple of accidents. We had no time to visit Sao Paulo as our flight left the day after we arrived so I decided to live in comfort that evening at a Best Western near the airport. Costly but worth it now and again.
Next day we misjudged our flight time horrendously meaning we got to the airport at 13:00 for a 21:30 flight! A horrible concrete airport didn't help. Luckily we did have time to sort out a mix up which stopped our bags being moved onto a plane bound for Los Angeles. Still it was odd that there was no mention of our connecting flight to La Paz, Bolivia. After a long day of waiting around we finally flew into Lima, Peru, to get our connecting flight to La Paz. What flight? It didn't exist. Luckily LAN Peru put us on the equally late flight, to land in La Paz at 3am, the next day and put us up a hotel for the evening and next day in Lima. The five star Sheraton, all expenses paid. Lovely.

Rio, give me some sugar

A 22 hour bus ride from Puerto Iguazu, Agrentina to Rio, Brazil. Not a great experience but had to be done as the air fare was horrendously expensive.
10 minutes on the bus and we were in Brazil. Once customs was seen to it was straight through hours of rolling hills and green fields looking more like a sunny day in England than I ever thought Brazil would be. Newly farmed fields, of I presume sugar beat as that's what a lot of cars run on here, were everywhere. As are Volkswagon Beetles and Campervans, the latter used as Ambulances in some places.
We passed more jungle type areas before night drew in and a terrible storm that came with it. The movie on the bus was Apocolypto and it couldn't be more apt. Shame it was in Portugese but I got the jist. As the rain hammered the bus and lightening struck fields close by I'll freely admit I was uncomfortable.
After numerous police checkpoints and random stops we arrive in a run down concrete looking Sao Paulo. We dropped a few people off and carried on, it didn't look like the place you'd want to arrive at 4am, or 4pm for that matter.
We arrived in sunny Rio at 10am after a few days of torrential rain here. Our hostel was pretty nifty, our room had a painting of the famous Christ the Redeemer on the wall. We even had a tiny balcony where we could see Christ from. From this moment forth we renamed him Bob. Much easier I thought.
Brazil is a huge country. When the Spanish invaded South America they struck a deal with the Portugese to share the land. Spain got what is now Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and so on, whereas Portugal got Brazil. It's a fair deal when you see it on a map.
Brazil also took the largest amount of African slaves on the continent. Unfortunately there were too many and now huge favellas, rat warrens of shanty towns, exist throughout the city.
Also, for us just getting into the swing of speaking and reading Spanish coming to Brazil was hard. Even words that look the same here are pronounced differently. It was a bit of a struggle but we were told that in most places you can get away with speaking Spanish, which did work sometimes.
There's no denying that Brazil and Argentina are worlds apart. Rio, especially the outskirts, is a very dirty, gritty and ugly place. This is also the most dangerous place I'd ever been in in my life. Not only that it's way more expensive, double that of Argentina.
But still the bay outside our hostel containing the famous Sugar Loaf mountain is beautiful. Shame you can't swim in Botofogo bay as the water is polluted. Nice.
Immediately we booked to go and watch a football match at the Maracana stadium that evening. It had to be done, especially after missing out in Argentina. The game was a dull affair with little in the way of Brazilian flair, no wonder all their best players play in Europe. But the night was good and two other couples from our hostel went who turned out to be really cool people. It was part of a tour of sorts as we'd heard dodgy things about the area around the stadium.
After a few beers it was back on the bus for the half hour journey to the hostel. I was a bit drunk by this point and had already foregone the toilet at half time for the bar, it was too busy. Problem was at full time we had to leave on the bus straight away, I was busting. Another thing about Rio is at night traffic doesn't stop at red lights. It's too dangerous and cars and buses have been attacked and robbed. I couldn't contain myself any longer and had to declare to the guide I was dying! The bus immediately pulled over at a busy intersection and let me out to piss up near the traffic light, I didn't make it to a tree. I felt a bit of an idiot stood there at the side of a busy road but that soon passed when I remembered why the bus doesn't normally stop. I apologised profusely to the 20 or so people on the bus who seemed to find it all highly amusing. Why do I do this to myself I don't know, and of all the places.
Off to see Bob the next day with an English couple and an Aussie guy we got chatting to at breakfast. It was a Sunday so the place was packed, as I'm sure it is most days. After a 20min steep funicular, train thing, ride to near the top you've a couple of options. Walk the stairs for about 2 minutes to the top or take the lift. Yes, lift. Once off the lift you get on a set of escolators. Yes, escolators right next to one of the most famous sights in the world. Odd. We walked.
The views over Rio are nothing short of tremendous. You can see the main beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema and the one near us, Botofogo. You can also see the many lush islands dotted around and the airport built out in the sea. Very Hong Kong like. Except you can also see the biggest favella in the world. It's huge. It doesn't take much to spot the many others as they're usually hugging hillsides just above town.
The other great sight is the odd shaped Sugar Loaf mountain and cable car to the top, that's for another day. Everything looked like a toy town, the Maracana stadium a Subbuteo set, from up there. It looked a lot better than down on the street.
We headed back to get some beach stuff and hit Ipenema and Copacabana. A nice place but it did remind me of the Costa del Sol, except the beach had more rubbish on it. Warnings about Copacabana had been heeded as we left our camera at the hostel and just had enough money for some classicly strong Caiprihnia cocktails on Copacabana. We felt good as there was 5 of us and were getting a bit cocky about how unsafe the place was supposed to be. Still there was always an edge to being there. Whilst sipping drinks a group of Brazilians came over and performed some unbelievable Caperwhera(not spelt right surely). This was an African martial art that was brought over by the slaves. It was banned by the Portugese but the Africans claimed it was a form of dancing and slightly modified it. It's impressive stuff and worth checking out. These guys would really make breaking your spine look good.
After a good, pay for the weight of your food, restaurant we got the public bus at night back. Two things not advised in the Lonely Planet. 1. Walking by Copacabana at night. 2. Getting the public buses at night, this is where a lot of muggings take place. But as there was a group of us slightly modified by booze we felt fine. I was feeling a lot more relaxed about Rio. From all that we'd heard we'd seen no evidence of anything dodgy. Until we hear the next morning about the Finnish couple in our hostel getting robbed in broad daylight at Copacabana at the same time we were there. Hmmm

To the devil's throat

Avoiding a 22 hour bus ride we buy a flight to Iguazu falls. More precisley Puerto Iguazu, the cool jungle-ish town on the Argentinean side of the falls. If you haven't heard of Iguazu then you should. They're some of the biggest waterfalls in the world and have somewhere in the region of 272 falls within one area.
Landing here is a sharp contrast from Buenos Aires. It's a laid back tropical town and is very humid. Our hostel, run by a punk rocking Argie/Brasilian, is beyond cool. Hammocks in the jungle garden out the back with homebaked chocolate cake and bread for breakfast.
The Iguazu Falls are within a huge national park outside of town. The border between Brazil and Argentina is actually somewhere in the water near the falls and you can cross to Brazil to view the falls over a nearby bridge, we didn't have the time. The Argentina side allows you to get right up close to the huge falls via boardwalks across vast rivers. It's amazing. You walk right up to the edge of most falls, the Gargantua del Diablo, aka the 'Devils throat', is the most impressive. A huge volume of water piles down here and falls all around dropping from lush green cliffs. It's loud, very loud. And you get soaked, just what you want in the baking heat, but it doesn't take long to dry out.
This has to be another one of those must-see places in the world and seeing it through Argentina seems much better than the more expensive and more run down Brasilian side.
It's difficult to describe the whole thing as it's massive. I'll have to get some photos on here when I get on a decent pc. One thing I do remember is the constant rainbows from the vast amount of spray covering the whole area. It's a hell of a sight, and sound.
That night we went out to another typical Argentinean grill for some great steak with a woman from Israel. As it turns out Israelies love coming to South America because it's soo cheap. They're also big fans of Eastenders and Keeping up appearences. Odd.
After a couple of hours of trying to be persuaded to visit Israel we head back to our jungle hostel. Besides, tomorrow we have an almighty 24 hour bus journey to Rio de Janeiro!
This also means the end of Argentina for us. For me this is one of the best countries we've visited so far. It's friendly, cheap, easy to get around, has amazing food and drink and is incredibly diverse. It's also well set up, has great cities and huge national parks. I'd just come on holiday here for a couple of months. One day I will.

Don't cry for me..

Argentina has had it's fair share of problems. Before the Spanish arrived it was doing alright but only in a hunter gatherer subsistance farmer type of way. After the first wave of Spanish attack things changed with the left over horses and cattle that have now become Argentinean staples. The cowboys of Argentina, 'Gauchos', and the quality beef (actually British cows) have become Argentinean trade marks the world over.
Once the Spanish finally did command Buenos Aires they banned trade with all countries other than Spain. This was pretty crippling as other parts of Argentina were doing well from Bolivian exports. The Brits had an attempt at taking Buenos Aires but were soon beaten off. Eventually Argentina, by the hand of the now South American hero General San Martin, declared independance from Spain. This cleared previous trade embargoes and made Argentina a decent export force.
In more recent times cruel dictators have lead the way. Before this however, the famous Peron's set about improving the welfare state on one hand and destroying the right to free press on the other. Economically Argentina began to suffer and needed to borrow heavily. A debt which they still haven't paid off.
The dictatorship which ruled the country through the dirty war of the late 70's was harsh. Up to 30,000 people went 'missing' for declaring any kind of disdain for the leader. Funnily enough it was the Brits who put an end to the dictatorship by fending off the Argentineans attempt to regain the Falkland Islands, named Las Malvinas in Argentina. Low on funds and over stretching himself the dictator lost the war and leadership of the nation.
Argentina have had so many ups and downs in the last 30 years. From being the second richest country in the world to the Argentinean Peso being worth absolutely nothing. Prompting people to queue with sack fulls of cash to buy enough food to feed themselves.
Now it seems things have come good and the economy is more stable. People on the street are friendly and genuinely happy. It's a good place to be, if it lasts.
Being British I did expect some stick from the Argies, either it be football or regarding the Falklands, but not a jot. I did notice that on maps of Argentina the Falklands are still considered part of the country although no Argies live their. Near the train station is a monument donated from Britain in a kind of peace agreement. This has graffiti strewn across it reading, 'Volvemos Las Malvinas'. To the effect of, 'we will get the Falklands back'.
Back on the street and Buenos Aires continues to impress. Full of neo-classical buildings such as the grand 'pink parliament'. This is where Evita Peron gave a famous speech of which I know zero about. I couldn't stand to watch the film of constant warbling starring Madonna. Unless she was naked at any point, then I may consider it.
Many a business man struts along the business districts and smoke havana cigars in the smoking cafes dotted around. Many places reminiscent of the best of London.
We cross the widest avenue in the world, the Avenida de Julio 9. It's huge. I think there's 16 lanes and it takes a while to get fully across the other side on foot. There's a famous obolisk in the centre that you can see clearly from the plane as we leave.
But before that there's still much to see. We ran out of time to watch a football match and visit La Boca. This is an edgy area even in daylight but one street is for the tourists, brightly coloured corregated houses and live street tango. Just don't stray off that main street. Definitley one for next time.
Buses here are superb. Well they're rickety and a bit uncomfortable but the maximum you pay around town is 'ochenta', 0.80 Pesos. About 13p to the Brit. Considering the bus rides can be up to an hour long it's resonable indeed.
We visit the flash district of Recolleta. There's supposed to be another grander area, Palermo, but time isn't on our side. The reason for visiting Recolleta is the graveyard. Sounds grim. In fact this is one of the grandest graveyards in the world. It's huge. Giant crypts and sarcophigi and statues line up next to each other in countless mini-avenues. Some incredibly over the top stuff. Famous Argentineans are buried here, including Evita, from poets to presidents to humble nobodies. It's worth a visit just to see the scale of the place. It does show a problem with the society here though. The gap between rich and poor is enormous. On the way to the airport you see the sprawling slums of tumbledown crammed in concrete and corregated iron hovels. Bare footed kids ambling dirt streets not a million miles away from well-to-do business men puffing on havanas.
We finish off our Buenos Aires visit with a traditional Argentinean grill, a Parilla. Meat, there certainly is. What meat I'm not 100% sure. I think I ate intestine of some sort(some places actually advertise themselves as 'Intestine Specialists', no thanks), a nice tasting blood sausage, a bit of steak and the oddest ribs I've ever seen. It's like they just randomly hacked into a cow and left half of it's vertebrae on my plate!
Off north we headed still high on Buenos Aires and looking forward to returning. I still can't get over the odd Argentinean mentality of littering though. It was the same in Mendoza. A beautiful place but people of all ages and backgrounds think nothing of throwing any rubbish they have onto the street, or in Mendoza's case into the vast gutters. Then every night cleaners come round and clean it all up for the next days onsluaght. Maybe they think it's keeping people in work. It bugs me either way.
However, Buenos Aires has to be one of the greatest cities on this earth. Amazing food, music, art, culture, people, neighbourhoods and districts. Please go, but try and forget about the rubbish.

More Paris than Paris

A description of Buenos Aires by some random traveller we met. If it really is like Paris but much better then it sounds good to me.
First off there's a 12 hour bus ride from Mendoza to get over. Argentinean buses are excellent. There's no National Express crap here. Well in fact there is, much cheaper and more crammed buses are everywhere but when it's this cheap I think we'll travel first class. The bus even has a stewardess who supplies us with good food, steak obviously, and great red wine. A couple of movies and a bit of wine later and I slide back on my fully reclinable leather chair. Not bad.
Still, arriving early morning in Buenos Aires I'm knackered. The city is huge, 13 million people live here in the capital of Argentina and it's no surprising that it's heavily built up from a long way out.
The centre looks really good, akin to photos I've seen of New York and there's a resemblance to Paris, mainly in our hostel. We stay in the chic San Telmo area, famous for it's tango shows, art, music and romance. The hostel itself looks straight out of a French romance flick. High glass ceilings, checkered floor and ornate metal adorned doors. The croissants in the included in the breakfast are yet another nod to the French connection.
We head out for the Sunday market in San Telmo. The cobbled streets are pedestrianised for this flea market selling antiques and arts and crafts. It's crammed and rightly so. The colonial buildings make the place feel like it hasn't changed for years and the great street music create a relaxed colourful vibe. There's the standard street tango coupled with fantisticly fleet fingered Spanish guitarists. We watch an orchestra type tango kind of band on the street. They'd even dragged out an upright piano for the day. The music was soo good we bought a cd and considered going to their gig that night.
We'd heard about a newly renovated dock area that was similar to London. Not really. Not at all. It was a few renovated warehouses next to a brown and murky water setting. Not ideal. Plenty of overpriced restaurants but non had the appeal of the dimly lit stylish places in San Telmo.
Back there we went and as dusk arrived a large group of drummers filled the streets in a slow but constant march picking up people like the pied piper. The beats were a bit ramshackle though.
We bumped into a couple we'd met in Mendoza a few days earlier and mentioned the gig that evening. We met them later on and ventured into low lit back street club. Tango lessons were going on when we arrived so we hit the bar. It was a funky place that could've easily been featured in films like Amelie or Delicatessen. First up was a drum troop. These guys were amazing, and amazingly loud. Displaying samba to dance, to what was almost metal, beats. All following the lead conductor with expert precision.
When the band we'd came to see arrived on stage people were itching for a dance and began tango-ing imediately. Not for me, I can't dance. Fact. But it was good to watch people just doing it for the love of it rather than going to one of the many Tango shows on offer here.
The band were excellent. Who thought beardy accordian, upright bass and piano coupled with over the top Spanish vocals could sound this good? Very rock and roll.
This could be Europe. I love it.
Not bad for a first day.

Mas vino por favor!!!

It took a couple of hours to get to the Andes proper but when we did it took around 5 hours to cross them. This is some mountain range. Such a humongously long and quite wide range of peaks with such a varied range of colours and rock formations. Some bits look like Uluru, others like New Zealand and a lot like I've never set my eyes on before.
We pass under snow covers by grey rivers, then red rivers (near where most of the red rock and earth was) following an abandoned railway line. Up in the mountains is the pretty good looking ski resort but the season has pretty much passed. It's supposed to be a very cheap place to try it too.
The border into Argentina is high up in the mountains and pretty cold, not surprisingly. Everyone's bags have to come off the bus and be x-rayed and everyone's hand luggage gets individually searched. Takes a bit of time but the Argentineans are friendly enough.
Bienvenidos a Argentina!
Coming down from the Andes into a small dusky village in the middle of no-where, Uspallata. This is where the Brad Pitt film 'Seven Years in Tibet' was shot. It didn't seem too appealing to me, although we'd been told otherwise.
Mendoza, however, sounded a lot more my kind of place. Wine is big business here, I'm sure we've been on a wine region tour around the world, not on purpose I may add. 70% of Argentina’s entire wine production is from the rolling hills and flat plains of Mendoza. Over 2000 wineries in total. Chances are if you've drunk Argentinean wine that you drunk from the grapes of Mendoza. I was never much of a fan before but the wine here is top notch. We'd heard good things about Argentinean food and wine and neither disappointed. Oh, and it's cheap. The supermarket's cheapest wine was about 50p, fairly palatable. We usually splashed out a bit and got a good one for one pound fifty. Malbec is the local grape of choice, tinto(red) if you're interested.
Mendoza itself is a beautiful sun drenched and friendly city. It's safe to stroll around anywhere here at any time and you don't get hassled. In fact it's fair to say that again I'm one of the only blond guys walking about the place but no-one cares. Partly because this must be the best looking city in the entire world. I've never seen soo many good looking people in one place in my life. It was obscene! No wonder they couldn't give two hoots about a blond Lancashire lad!
Every street is tree lined and fairly wide. An earthquake in 1861 flattened most of the city. The council decided to rebuild with wider avenues, for rubble to fall into, and include many open squares for people to evacuate into if another earthquake struck. It never did, but it did mean that the place is great to walk around. Lots of little Plazas in different styles, there's a Chile, Italy (in a Roman style with statues and fountains), España(with intricate tiling covering every surface) Plaza and so on, that all look great. It's much warmer than temperate Santiago too. I can't begin to think how many days it's been since we saw rain.
Ice cream seems big business here, on a Saturday night families and couples are seen scoffing large ice-creams upto 2am! I know because we could see them from our room.
There's also a pre-occupation with battered old cars here. Every other car is 1970's Renault or Fiat. It seems there's more status the more battered your car looks. I'm sure a few have been booted in the side to achieve the desired affect. They're also very very loud cars. The street below our window howls nightly with the loudest exhaust noises I've heard away from a race track.
We ate some of the greatest ever food here too. The meat, Argentineans being the biggest meat eaters in the world, is beyond good. They certainly know how to live very well here. Some of the funky restaurants and cafés make it feel very European. A woman we met from Sydney, whilst in New Zealand, said that she preferred travelling in Peru and Bolivia than in Argentina. Mainly because Bolivia was much cheaper and that Argentina felt like it could've been in Europe. That's exactly why Mendoza was so good I thought. Besides, like the American in the next room said to us, 'Just because a place is cheap it doesn't make it good. Bolivia is no Argentina that's for sure'.
This is where we also begin to encounter another type of traveller that didn't seem to exist in Oz or NZ. The kind of traveller that isn't happy unless they've hacked half of their leg off somewhere in the Amazon and needs to enter bugs to the wound to seal it. These guys are planks. They think if you're not going on a 4 day trek through the jungle then you've seen nothing. Bollocks. These are the same people who say they've been to England and have only seen London.
We lived it up in Argentina, there's no denying it. Great wine and amazing food every night. Sun shining everyday, beautiful streets, beautiful people, beautiful buildings and beautiful cars. I was in my element.
The only problem with the place I could find was the transport. We walk everywhere in most places and Mendoza was no different. Thing is when we did want to get a bus we couldn’t as you need the exact amount, in change. Change is a real problem. The supermarket near us had 4 coins, the rest notes. 4 coins! I mean come on! This also meant that every time you buy anything you are always asked if you've got 'cambio', or change to you and me. No-one has change, except for the bus companies who must have piles of it!
We could manage with this until the day we decide to go for a walk in the park. Parque San Martin is a sprawling 420,000 hectares. I'm not too great with hectares. In fact I've no idea how big a hectare is. So walking it sounded fine. It took 30minutes of walking in baking sunshine to get there. When we did get there we realised it must be quite big as there's proper roads inside, and no-one is walking. There are joggers though so we plod on for another 2 and a half hours on dusty path and being fried by the sun. This was a bad idea. Our main objective was to climb atop the hill on the park for views of the city. No chance. We couldn't find anything but dust tracks and roads. But then to show how big this place was we passed two Universities, a cycling velodrome, a football stadium, a science research facility and a zoo. We finally get to a campground and I test my Spanish in trying to find out where to get the bus to get out of here. Surprise, surprise you need the exact change. The campground shop had only one coin! The owner even rang a friend and he had no coins either! What a joke. Another hour or so of walking and we happen upon a bit of life and a waterfall, aswell as the obligatory smooching couples lying on top of each other on the grass. We walk back and write the whole thing off.
Totally knackered and after about 5 hours of walking in flip-flops my legs are black with dirt. We deserve some good food and drink. Thankfully, we're in the right place. An excellent buffet place with fresh pasta, made on request, gorgeous paella, various salads, quiches, ice creams, cakes, cheesecakes, pancakes with booze and ice cream and a meat counter. Now in Argentina they don’t have an average buffet. There’s a separate guy that looks after and gives out the meat. It’s a huge grill rammed with all kinds of stuff that I have no idea. I do recognise the large pig strung out across the top though! I have no idea what to ask for so I just tell him ‘Mi Español is no bueno’ and he lumps one of the biggest pieces of tastiest meat I’ve ever eaten. And cracking crackling! All the great food you could eat and a bottle of wine for about 6 pounds each. I love this place! I could barely move afterwards. It had a great atmosphere too as a live singer wandered through the masses and everyone knew the words, young and old clapping and cheering. We were the only Europeans in there but it was just brilliant. An American guy came over to us and said, ‘Isn’t this just the most bizarre place you’ve ever been?’. ‘Yes, it’s great!’, I beamed.
Our last day was spent checking out some cool art and a bit of history about the earthquake. The graffiti here is also really good and really brightens the place up. We sat watching skateboarders whilst eating ice-cream in the sunshine.
If Mendoza is this good, what’s Buenos Aires going to be like!?

Un poquito mas Chile

A little bit more on Chile. Firstly, I neglected to mention the huge amount of couples that are totally all over each other here. It's quite funny most of the time as couples lie on top of each other in parks, on benches, against trees, lamposts and so on. It's a national pastime to snog each others faces off at any given opportunity! When we were at one of the nice looking parks a girl returned from the toilet to be instantly jumped on by he boyfriend. I just kept thinking, 'get a room!'. But then I suppose that's just the Latin spirit so it's not something that bothers me, unless the couple in question are above a certain age!
Secondly, in Chile and most of South America I'm a gringo. That is, a person of fair complexion. A group of drunk Chileans shouted 'Hey Gringo!' at me and came over to us. They were alright as it happens and just wanted to welcome us to Chile and invited us to drink with them. I had read that this does happen with foreigners and can sometimes lead to a drunken mugging later in the day. I gave it a miss!
I like Chile though and would like to see more. It's a very narrow country and no part of it is further than 250 miles from the Ocean. The Andes border the back of the country onto Argentina, and what a mountain range the Andes is.
To the north there's desert(and I think it's the driest place on Earth) and surf, to the south there's the last point before reaching the south pole. The 'end of the Earth' as they like to call it. Freezing fiordlands and lakes and so forth. In winter there's snowboarding and skiing. Surfing in many places, cold water apparently year round, and further south lots of cowboy-esque plains for horse trekking if you like that kind of thing.
Brief as it was I liked the sound of Mendoza in Argentina and was keen to see the capital, Buenos Aires. Across the Andes it is then!

New City, new continent

After 3 months of pretty easy travelling it was time to venture to another world. I won´t deny that I was nervous about flying to South America, akin to the flight to Beijing as I just had no idea what to expect. After Oz we were looking for a totally different place and the challenge of South America but after New Zealand we kind of wanted to stay around for a bit. Tough. A 10 hour flight beckoned. We´d heard Santiago was like somewhere in Europe but I wasn´t for believing them.
This turned out to be the longest day on the trip. We awoke around 8am to return the van in Auckland. Our flight from Auckland was at 18:30 that evening. We landed in Chile 10 hours later at 13:30......the same day!! How tired!? Damn you time zones!
The flight itself was a bit odd. We were sat next to an insane Japanese/American/Russian guy who talked non stop for the first 3 hours. He filled us in on Russian history, his hatred for America and Australia(aswell as Qantas(?)) and continued to bang on about anything and everything. I could barely keep my eyes open! Eventually I gave in and listened to the pretty good music choice Lan Chile had on the plane. After an a couple of hours of Morrissey and a dire animated movie the crazed guy next to us gets his large laptop out, after much effort. He wacks on some Latin music at full belt, most people at this point where asleep. It didn´t take long for some random Chilean to put him in his place. The guy left the plane with us dressed in what looked like a hitman for the mafia outfit, it was soo embarrassing as all the Chileans were cracking their sides at him.
We arrived at our hostel eventually and quickly realised that English is not enough here. My Spanish needs a lot of work but we sorted it all out after a bit of confused broken spanish. Santiago looks a bit dirty and rough. A lot of great looking Spanish colonial buildings but they´ve let them get run down and gritty. However, where our hostel is, the Plaza de Armas(everywhere in South America has a Plaza de Armas for some reason), is pretty good looking. Palm trees and nicely looked after buildings. It´s a great view from the balcony over looking the square too. This is where most political protests take place and everyday someone different has a banner and a microphone protesting over some injustice. We´d read that Chile is close to becoming the first 1st-world country of South America. I think they´ve got a way to go.
Almost straight away we see a tourist get her bag snatched. She was chasing him shouting and some locals tripped the guy up. Quickly a crowd gathered and they dragged the offender to the floor and proceeded to rain down punches and began kicking the guy in the head. Any excuse for a punch up. It seemed the guy had handed off the bag as the tourist never seemed happy. The guy eventually legged it off with his shirt in tatters. Welcome to Santiago. We had no such problems though.
There´s no doubt I stand out here, not many blond guys walking about, so there´s the odd people staring at us but it´s not too bad. It´s not as bad as China for instance. First impressions are that it´ll be much easier than China too, at least I know some of the language!
There´s a great arty sort of area in Santiago that´s full of colourful streets and really good graffiti. Graffiti, when it´s good, really improves the look of the place here as most of the buildings are totally run down. It´s when graffiti is on decent buildings or just tags that I can´t stand it.
Every house seems to be in a different colour and with the sun shining and the huge sight of the massive Andes Mountains in the background it´s a pretty place to stroll.
We ended going up a really steep train ride to a point overlooking the city. It was unbelievable how large Santiago is. Surely there´s more than 6 million people here! And then the snow capped Andes are just right there looming massively over it all.
I´ll admit it´s cheap here too. I think we´ll be eating out every night for the duration of our stay in South America, can´t wait! Getting used to the language may take some time but it´s pretty good when people understand my spanish and we actually get somewhere.
Our hostel is in a really old building that looks like it could be in New York or Paris, there´s even a guy in the lift who solely opens the doors and presses the buttons for you. Odd but cool.
A beautiful park is also in the centre of town, once part of a hermits mansion, then a convent then a military bastian, and offers great views of the city and has cool waterfalls within. The money that must've been spent here is unreal yet there is also quite a lot of poverty. There´s a real unemployment problem.
It doesn't feel unsafe here but there's definitly an edge to the place. Like Europe it is not. The Chilean people have had some real hard times and cruel dictators, Pinochet being the most infamous. Many people under his reign 'disappeared' when in disagreement with him. Thousands of people we´re rounded up in the national stadium and neutralised at one point. No wonder the Chileans seem a bit happy. Things are on the up and their new-ish woman president is following most other South American nations in her anti-America stance. For a long time the countries of South America have been exploited by America for no real gain the people of the Continent and for massive American profits. But saying that there doesn't seem too much of an anti-US stance on the streets.
We decide try and work out the subway, which is brand new, and it turns out this is where all the cool kids and people with money are. It's a great and safe way to get around and each station has it's own art theme. One in particular had a huge painting of the Andes. Art is massive here and the whole place is pretty colourful. Music and art is everywhere which gives the place a good vibe. Whether it's somewhere I'd recommend as a visit I'm not sure. Saying that, I´d probably go back and head south and north also. We stay for 3 nights before taking an 8 hour bus across the Andes to Mendoza in Argentina. 8 hours on a bus is nothing here, as we soon find out.

Say goodbye New Zealand

The end of a very brief stop in a very diverse and stunning country. I totally loved this place. Matt, who we travelled with in Oz for a bit desribed New Zealand as, 'Like England times 10'. That pretty much sums it up. Other than the volcanic activity going on, the tropical rainforests, the vast mountain ranges, the stunningly clear lakes and the seemingly remoteness of it all.
Everything you could want it here, it's just a bit colder.
Loved Queenstown, loved the amazing driving roads, the astonishing natural beauty the more friendly nature of the people, the accessibility of it all. It's just so easy.
Would I come back? I'd go back tomorrow. My only regret is that we didn't stay longer, much longer. But I'll look forward to seeing those crazy islands again. Is this the greatest country on Earth? Quite Possibly.

on to the land of smoke

In the morning after stopping in our forest oasis we spot a fast flowing river through a deep gorge. We drive down to the foot of it to discover large silver pipes and industrial looking stuff that seems to be a power plant of sorts. Alarms start to go off very loudly, baffled and a bit scared we turn around and screw off into the distance.
Before arriving at Taupo we stop off for the best iced coffee I've ever had in a normally insignificant town. I say normally because it looks like any other. First off it has an odd name, Bulls. Not sure why but that's that. It seems the local council and town folk have taken to playing on the town's quirky name. The rubbish bins in town are large milk churns. Most of the local businesses have similar style signage but with different slogans on. I'm not sure if I was tired or just feeling odd that day but I thought this was great, even if the slogans were a bit cheesy. The town social club's sign read - 'Bulls Social Club - Be Socia-bull'. The local bank was of course, 'Bank-a-bull'. Even local politicians couldn't help themselves on posters promoting their campaign, 'Bulls - a town like no udder'.
Moving on.
We reach the largest lake in NZ to discover it's not the best looking lake in NZ. Still it's alright. Many people skydive above here for the views but limited time mean we can't. Still, I think I'd rather do it over Queenstown.
On the way to our next overnight destination you start to see changes in the landscape, i.e. it's steaming. Steam rises from random spots in the countryside. We stop at a thermal spa place, and instead of paying for that malarky we check out the free, and unsignposted, park next door. Bubbling water and hot pools threw steam at us and they even had small baths for public use, as well as a Maori underground oven.
Further up the road was a place we had to pay to get in, damn it! But it was worth it. 'Crators of the moon' it was called, catchy. Around here more Lord of the rings stuff was filmed, evil sections apparently. You can totally see why. The place is a large crator that has steam pouring out of spots all over. Bubbling mud creates that rotten egg smell and is does whiff quite bit. Walking round the place feels like you're part of some 80's pop video with the dry ice machine on full blast.
It's a desolate landscape but somehow quite attractive and the warm steam engulfing us warms the cockles I tell thee. The whole/hole thing is just insane and bits of it keep falling into the abyss as time goes one. You can hear sounds like kettles boiling as the water beneath the surface boils and tries to break through.
On the road again and we reach Huka falls. Not really what I call falls, more like a very fast flowing channel from Taupo. Many a jetboat ride goes through here going periously close to rocks at breakneck speed.
Rotorua stinks. It whiffs, I mean. The geothermal activity going on here and around is like nothing I've ever encountered. I don't know how people live here. It seems to me that the whole place is ready to blow!
On the edge of town is a large geyser that gushes water up into the air at 10am every morning. We find out that it needs a little 'help' to do it from the staff who add baking soda to produce the 'natural' wonder. We don't bother going.
Rotorua is a nice place with a huge presidential palace and gardens that seem a bit out of place but look good anyway.
Right next to were we stop, right beside the rather smelly Lake Rotorua, is another geothermal park with plenty of bubbling mud pools and a large-ish pink/purple/green lake that is like something from Mars. I felt like looking around for a special effects guy because it seemed totally unbelievable. Very beautiful even if it was like Firday the 13th.
Right next door was a local market which was good mix of Maoris and Pakea(the white dudes) that again is something we never saw the likes of in Australia. Rotorua has one of the biggest Maori populations in New Zealand and they seem really friendly too.
And all this for absolutely nothing. Obviously I loved it. Coffee and samosas all round! Not a bad way to start the day.
On the edge of town we check out Blue Lake, which looked green, and Green Lake, which looked blue. No we didn't get them mixed up. Nearby this was the site of a large volcanic eruption a hundred or so years ago. This eruption wiped out local villages, one of which is now a tourist attraction, 'The buried village'(looked pretty new to me) and also a previous tourist attraction, Pink and White terraces. This used to be a top place to visit to see the brightly coloured stepped landscape produced by the chemical reactions going off all over this place.
Whilst cruising around the edge of town we spot some people in swimming costumes and towels by the side of the road in the middle of a forest. We then realise that people walk down to some natural hot pools beneath the roadside. As they charge for this down the road we thought this would be cracking opportunity to have a go for free.
It was freezing out of the water but once in it got scorching. It was very relaxing to be in pretty cold temperatures outside only in my shorts but in steaming hot water. Where some soil had fallen away near the river bank someone had placed candles and it was all pretty idillic. Except afterwards when we realised our clothes stunk! But that's the price you pay!
On to our final destination, Auckland. A dull ride for the last few hours. I can't believe people live anywhere near Auckland when there's soo much else going on in this insane and beautiful country.

To Picton and beyond

There are supposed to be 6 sheep to every person in New Zealand. We haven't seen that many sheep, but then we haven't seen that many people!
What we did see was some great looking coast that couldv'e easily been in Australia. A bit further on and the road really does hug the ocean. We pull over, almost randomly, right next to one of New Zealand's biggest seal colonies. It was right next to the road, it was raining and I couldn't even be bothered getting out of the car but we watched about 40 seals prance around for about half an hour whislt huge lorries past by.
We arrived at Picton which is mainly just a port town that everyone passes through to head to the North Island. It's a fairly lush place out of town and we followed an ultra winding road around misty green hills and past houses built on what looked like very unstable cliffs. It was like being in Magnum P.I. and I half expected to be picked up by some cool dude in a helicopter.
Quite a lot of houses around here are only accessible by boat, talk about being out of the way. No idea what they do for shopping.
We found another free campsite but the rain made it too boggy to drive on.
The area around Picton is called the Marlbourgh Sound and is just a collection of huge inlets of water that make it look like there's loads of islands around but they are connected to the mainland, if somewhat tenuously in places.
The 3 hour boat ride between the islands got dull after the first half an hour through Marlbourgh Sound. In the morning the low mist hung around the hillls and in the bays making the place look eerie and really good with it. It felt like we were on a film set and some giant croc would leap from the water. Nah, it's too cold.
After a 3 hour boat ride we had another 5 hours of driving ahead. We did have a bit of a look at the capital of New Zealand, Wellington. From the docks it looked grey and grim but once in the city it looked fairly modern and not bad. It was strange to see soo many people in one place again. A fair amount of business activity goes on here, judging by the amounts of suits and glass buildings we see, but it was back into the country for us.
It doesn't take long to get back into forests and gorges either. We passed the largest volcano in New Zealand, covered in snow, and realised the landscape here is quite different from the South Island. The hills look like something on a train set. Up and down all over the place and an almost fake green colour. Some of the hills are flat on top and this is caused by the speed in which they're created. New Zealand is a volitile land and has two huge plates beneath it pushing together. The flatness at the top of some hills is what used to be flat land below but got pushed up violently. It looks pretty damn strange and excellent. We're heading for the biggest lake in NZ, Taupo, but don't quite make it in a day. Instead we find another government campsite and stop in the middle of a lush forest completley on our own. Not too far from a large prison I might add(I'm sure I heard search helicopters during the night, I bet no-one would find us for ages if we were murdered out here).
Outside of the van at night it was soo dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, even when you eyes tried to adjust. It was the darkest place I'd ever been.
It was also a bit of a challenge driving back up the sodden hill to get off the campground the next morning. The incredibly narrow gate probably was trying to tell us not to drive down the steep incline but I did anyway. It took a few attempts of getting bogged down in mud but we made it. I wasn't looking forward to trying to push the van up anyway.
As we discover not only are there way more people on the North Island, there is also lots of strange steaming bubbling goings on.

From coast to coast

On the way to Arthur's Pass, the name of the alpine pass that goes from one coast to the other, we stopped off at a vast beach with vicious looking surf. The beach itself was grey and had the biggest driftwood I've ever seen on it, I'm talking half trees here. The place was called Shipcreek after a ship that was wrecked on the coast of Australia got dragged across the sea to this beach. Although it looked rough it was still a cool looking beach and we ended up following a path just behind it. This led into a tropical swamp forest, obviously. Pools of tea coloured water sat beside lush trees and plenty of ferns, one of the national emblems along with the Kiwi.
Onto the pass. Arthur's Pass is often closed to to snow as it transverses snowy mountain ranges. It was open for us though and was an amazing drive. We started competing as to who had the best view out of our window. Winding roads led us beside mountains and under rock shelters with thousands of gallons of water pouring over the top of them. Long spanning bridges added to the ride. We stoppped off to take some snaps and a Kea jumped onto our windscreen and wing mirror. A Kea is a large-ish parrot looking bird, but grey on the outside and pink underneath it's wings. They're quite persistent birds and it then jumped onto a nearby campervan and began attacking the aerial. Apparently they're a bit of a pest.
We drove through a couple of extremely expensive one road villages and arrived at a place called Hokitiki. I think this was actually before we started on the pass but never mind. Hokitiki was a nice looking town that seemed to specialise in bone carving and jade gemstones. These are not in the same league as the jade we saw in China but for some reason the Chinese jade is looked down upon here. The town has a lush green hilly background with even larger snow covered peaks beyond. It reminded me of Hong Kong or Thailand type tropical hills, apart from the snowy mountains that is.
We drive through Arthur's Pass village on the way and although it's nothing to write home about we do note that most small towns here look much better than their Australian counterparts which are mainly dull and unappealing.
The mountains and the road continued to amaze as we passed more ski fields and gushing rivers.
Eventually after a day of twists and turns we arrive at Christchurch.
A nice place it is too. Quite leafy and unsurprisingly has many churches. The one on Kilmore Street I found particulary funny. It did remind me of England quite a lot as there are a few Tudor style buildings and it has a good looking English-style square. Starbucks again seem to have bagged one of the best looking buildings on the main square too.
There was the obligatory statue of Queen Victoria as well as Captain Cook. Some Cook statues get vandalised from time to time as the Maoris aren't always too pleased that the great explorer found this place.
Being an average Yorkshire boy, Cook wasn't supposed to amount to much but by a couple of turns of fortune he became Captain of a ship and went on to 'discover' more places than anybody else who ever lived. We'd read a bit about him in Australia, he was the first to land at Sydney and claim the land as Britain's before the French arrived. He also discovered Hawaii and was the first known Westerner to see surfing and remark on it in his journal. This was also the place of his demise as on a return visit the locals killed him in a misunderstanding. Anyway back to New Zealand. For the first people, like Cook, who landed here times were difficult. Many skirmishes broke out as a result of misunderstandings of the Maori Haka dance when new arrivals landed. This was seen as an invitation to fight but that's not really the case. The Dutch most notably started flying off from the handle. New Zealand's Western name actually came from these wacky Dutch. Once the white man did settle here the Maoris felt that it would be good for them anyway as food was in short supply on the Islands. The white man brought pigs and sheep and often traded with the Maoris for land. Unfortunately the Maoris misunderstood the nature of some of the trades and are still to this day disgruntled about land that they see had wrongly been taken off them.
Guns were a big deal to the Maoris. The North Island Maoris traded for guns first and and what do you think they did as soon as they got hold of them? Headed south to slaughter other Maori tribes that hadn't got guns yet. There's no messing with these guys. This then carried onto the South Island where battles between Maoris on Maoris and then white men raged on for a while. Eventually treaties were agreed and things calmed down. A totally different scenario to Australia.
Thinking about it I'm sure the Dutch named the land New Zealand because of it's greenery but I could be wrong. I do remember that the original Maori name, Aotearoa, means the land of the long white cloud. Maori legend has it that the islands were created when some mystical fisherman bloke caught a huge fish or some similar crap. At least Maori legend is more coherent than the ramblings of the Aborigines.
Although Christchurch was a nice place we couldn't hang around, we had a very expensive ferry to the North Island in two days.

My first glacier

The drive up the South Island highway 6 was like nothing I've ever seen in my life. Unreal landscapes round every bend and through every window. The Great Ocean Road can't come close to this, except I'm sure it's warmer now and surfing is much more pleasant. We aim towards the coast and in a single days drive we take in rainforests, beaches, surfcoast, farming plains, undulating hills around endless bends, snowy mountains, waterfalls, gushing grey rivers and streams, culverts, lakes, plenty of cool looking one-lane bridges and the odd small town. Oh and two fricking glaciers!
Just in case you are unaware but glaciers are like huge ice rivers that slowly move through mountains, forming the landscape as they go. This ice is hard stuff and can, and does, change the shape of the rocks and mountains that it comes into contact with. It's pretty insane how accessible these places are too. You don't need a four-wheel drive car, you don't have to navigate snow covered mountains thousands of feet above sea level, you don't need to climb mountains for days, you don't even need snow chains on your tires. They're just down a side road of the main highway. You just pull up, after driving through a tropical forest(like there's a tropical forest near a ice cold glacier?! but there is). My brain really can't work this place out. So you get out of your car and walk 10 minutes and suddenly your at the foot of this huge mass of ice that's very slowly, about a centimetre a day, carving it's way through the mountains. It's flabbergasting. The glaciers look like a drawing from a distance and even up close it just feels strange. All around is bright grey cold looking rock and freshly carved sheer cliff faces. And then there's a tropical forest coming up behind. What's going on!?
Come here, you have to. You must.
The first glacier we see is called the Fox Glacier, maybe that's where Fox's glacier mints get their name? The small towns next to these glaciers get a large influx of visitors and are quite pricey as a result but what the hey, this is cracking.
Franz Josef is the next glacier and it's a fair bit larger and more impressive but both are fairly close to each other and worth the visit. At Franz Josef the ice reaches the top of the mountains and it looks like a huge ice river. Waterfalls and rivers gush powerfully and constantly down from the high peaks. All this is totally free and maintained by the council too. I love this place.
It's crazy how you can drive for two hours and see nothing but amzing scenery and absolutely no sign of life. New Zealand isn't even that big!
A cool thing about NZ is that they also have government run campsites that are either free or very cheap. We picked up a map and tried to find one to save on our spiralling costs. We couldn't and it was total darkness so we decided to camp overnight at a beautiful picnic stop. It was right next to a gorgeous lake and our new van had a large glass roof in the back to watch the stars. Pretty damn idillic stuff, and free! Is this the greates place on earth? There's no where else I'd rather be.
Right, next we have to drive from the East coast to the West coast in a day and end up in Christchurch. Easy.

First day on the road

Heading North out of Queenstown was a good experience in a few ways. Firstly, our newly aquired rental vehicle is far superior than our van in Australia, the doors shut properly, it has a heater that works and even a dvd player. Granted we only watched the dvd of our bungee but still. Secondly, the road itself. There doesn't seem to be any bragging in New Zealand about how good places are so we don't know what to expect. What we get are the greatest driving roads I've ever been on.
Just a few moments north of Queenstown was our first stop, Arrowtown. I beautiful little place with all slate houses and small shops and a meandering arrow shaped river next to the mountain alongside. It reminded me of a quiant English village a bit, but newer. This is another Lord of the rings location but as I'm not really clued up on these things I couldn't say where or what was in the films. What I do know is that there was gold found nearby and an influx of Chinese came as a result. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go and take a look at the nearby Chinese settlement that has now been renovated. Next time.
Onwards and upwards. We drove alongside a gorgeous and huge lake, called Hawea I think, for quite a while. We stopped off for jaw dropping views a few times. It really is amazingly good looking here. It's also almost deserted too. New Zealand is slightly bigger than the UK and only has a tenth of the population, most living on the North Island. This makes for most places and roads being all to us and I like it a lot.
Our first taste of a New Zealand campsite is at Wanaka. The site itself doesn't quite meet Australia standards for quality but the view beats it hands down. Lake Wanaka is where the town gets it's name, and what a lake. We can see the view of the mirrored water with snow covered mountain backdrop from our van and seeing the sun drop down here is stunning. Life is good. Very good. Wanaka is also a ski town and we pass numerous ski resorts as well as ski fields that you just go on yourself and aren't served be ski lifts and the such.
There are quite a few Germans and French here, probably because it looks like the Alps, and pretty much everyone is really friendly including the locals. There just seems a better feel here, more welcoming than in parts of Australia for definite.
After one day on the road we've seen some amazing stuff and only driven about 60km! We really have to make some ground if we're going to make it back up to Auckland in about 8 days. The following day we do make some ground, and what a day it turns out to be.

Fit for a Queen

After feeling rough the day after the night before of drinking cans of Bourbon and coke, I like neither but they go together in a can alright, we flew down to Queenstown. Turns out the weather was too bad to land at Queenstown so we got redirected to Invercargill right near the southern most point of New Zealand. I thought this was a bonus as we got a 3 hour bus ride back up to Queenstown with a chance to see a bit more of the country.

You can see the snow covered mountains around Queenstown a couple of hours away and when you do finally get to the lake which Queenstown is beside the views are stunning.

Queenstown itself is a nice little place and quite alpine looking. Most things here are based around adventure sports and spending wads of cash. It's the home of comercial bungee, bungy, bungi(no-one seems to spell it the same) jumping and is one of those must-do things I suppose. Two guys started the whole craze of bungee off when they jumped off the Eiffel Tower in the 80's. Since then over 400,000 people have jumped from the original commerical bungee site at Kawarau Bridge. This is a miserly 43meters of freefall, enough for me, but compared to the newer 'high-wire' bungee at 132metres it's nothing, apparently.
You can jet boat, skydive, bungee, sort of dry bobsleigh thingy, ping yourself from a huge swing, ski, snowboard, and even fly this odd plane with a huge fan on the back all attached to a rope if you like that kind of thing.

A gorgeous setting surrounds the place, large mountains on one side, called the Remarkables, and a vast blue lake at the forefront.

We finally arrived at our hostel, a cracking place overlooking the whole town, lake and mountains(although it was a bit of a steep climb up there everyday). Picture the scene, every morning we awake and twitch open the curtains to view a large pine covered mountain, sometimes with a sprinkling of snow. We then go into the kitchen and eat cereal overlooking the town and the pristine blue lake beneath the large snow covered mountains. This is easily one of the best hostels we've stopped in.

After consulting the friendly English guy running the place we headed into town for one of the best burgers I've ever had in my life. A Fergburger. Odd name and expensive but worth it!

Right, we had two days before we picked up the van and then had 9 days to drive all the way back up through the South and North islands to drop it off in Auckland. This was clearly badly planned. More time was needed really but we thought we'd give it a go.

First up, the bungee. I'm scared of heights so for me this wasn't the best thing I've ever done. It was an experience but throwing yourself off a bridge into a ravine full of freezing cold water isn't exactly my idea of a grand day out. That 2 or 3 seconds of freefall is what most people get a buzz off, I just got a headache. It reminded me of the dream you sometimes get when you're falling and all of a sudden you wake up with a shock. Except all the blood hasn't rushed to your head and your eyeballs don't feel like they're going to fall out. Not for me. The views were excellent though and everybody kept banging on about all the Lord of the Rings locations that were filmed around here. It's no surprise though because it's a beautiful place.

Next day snowboarding. It's hard to believe that only 6 days ago I was strolling around in flip flops absolutely roasting and now we're on a bus heading up to huge mountain ranges with thick clothing on. It was only 2 days to the end of the ski season but the day before we arrived there was a 82cm dump of snow on the mountain. Local reports described it as winter all over again. We saw a few snow covered abandoned cars on the way too, many people didn't expect such a large snowfall this late in the season. Classic timing for us. We got 2 lessons, board and gear hire for the day. Snowboarding seemed pretty difficult at first but after a few hours I was gettting the hang of it. It seemed easier than surfing too. I like. I did however fall flat on my face and thought I'd broken a rib! It hurt everytime I sneezed for the next 2 weeks.
The views from atop the Remarkables were amazing, the sun was shining and it turned out to be a beautifully clear day. Mountain after mountain in the distance and what felt like a giant playground of snow above town. Cracking.
On the way down in the bus many a car overtook us and the exceedingly windy route. One pick-up truck overtook us with a young lad and his snowboard sat in the back. I thought he must've been freezing. Further on down the road about 10 minutes later we saw the same truck again on it's roof. The 3 lads from the van were scattered about the road looking dazed but alright. The guy sat in the open topped back must've had the fright of his life being flung from that. Thankfully no-one seemed hurt and the bus carried on back into town.
I was really liking Queenstown and would go back in a shot, but with a huge wad of cash.
Back when this town was founded the location coupled with the fantastic scenery made the founder, I forget his name, declare the town 'fit for a queen'. The Queen never did visit, she probably didn't fancy bungee jumping much.

New Country, New Zealand

A new start for the first time in a while and we're totally unprepared and researched for New Zealand. All we know is that it's cold and wet, like England.
It's also further from Australia than I thought, about a 4 hours flight. You could get to Italy from Manchester in that time!
We land and it rains. Then it rains some more. This continues heavily for the next 4 days, I suppose it was due considering we've had about 3 days of rain on the whole trip!
From the plane it looks like England, overcast and very green, which is quite a good sight after all this time.
Once we get into Auckland, our home for the next 4 days, we notice how unbelievable steep this place is! Why is no-one telling me how incredibly difficult to walk around these places are!!? Turns out not all the streets are steep but the one near our hostel is the steepest street I've ever seen, gasps from most people in the bus on the way down meant it wasn't just me with vertigo. As we learn Auckland is built on 48, 49 or 52 volcanoes(depending on which book you read), so at least that explains the insanity of the roads but why they just don't build curves in the road to stop everybody skidding in Winter I've no idea.
There are moments of dryness and we do get a lot of walking under our belts. We walk up to a dormant volcano on the edge of town to look back on the city. It's a decent looking place, quite moody with the grey clouds rolling by and the amount of water that surrounds here. It's windy almost constantly too. We again learn that Auckland is nicknamed the 'city of sails' due to it's winds and competitiveness in all sports that utilise it - Windsurfing, Sailing, Kite-boarding and so on. Great for them, crap for us walking around it!
Either way I quite like it. There's not a great deal to see in Auckland other than the large communications tower they have that dominates the skyline but there's just something about it that appeals. We hear that the land and islands are beautiful further north but as we have no transport of our own and not too much time we'll give that a miss.
After strolling around the city and park over the next few days we feel like we know the place too well. 4 days is definitley too long. Still the people seem friendlier than Australia and the mix between the Moaris and the white folk is totally different. Also, for some reason Auckland is absolutely swamped with Chinese. Which is great for cheap internet and food!
We spend the last day or so on the internet and reading up on a bit of the history of the place, of which I'll go into as and when.
One thing is for sure though, the native people of New Zealand did not lie down and roll over like the Aboroginies did. Oh no. The Maoris are a totally different brand of people. Landing in New Zealand tells you something different straight away, the sign reads 'Welcome to New Zealand' and underneath is the Maori version in equal size letters. As we find out, Aotearoa was the old name before the Pakeha(white man) came along. This name is everywhere, as are the many names of townships and settlements that have remained in the original Maori name. This was no British conquest, more an agreement, and I think the settlers act differently than the Australians do because of it. Aussies are often brash, loud and cocky. Not so in New Zealand. It's no wonder when you see the size of the Maori blokes!
We get a flight to the South Island, it was only a couple of years ago that I found out that New Zealand was in fact 2 islands, the north and the south. The North is more populated, Auckland being the most populous city. But even Auckland isn't exactly crammed. I wonder what the south is like then.
Is Auckland worth a visit? Not particluarly, but we had a great curry and a slight taste of Britain so it made it better than it was. A couple of days is plenty.
Off to Queenstown(and getting our own tranpsort in the form of a converted people carrier) we head, in a roundabout way.

Oz all over

2 and a half months over with in Oz. Thoughts? I liked it. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. It's a wonderful and yet frustrating country. Amazing stuff, annoying stuff. The nature and the country itself is outstanding. The people not always so, but I suppose that's the way in England too. A guy from Melbourne said to us on a campsite once that the quality of life is much better. I think that's something they like telling themselves, and us, to make them feel better about living there. The quality of life isn't far greater. The climate is better than Blighty but then again so is the climate in Spain. But they have heavy water restrictions, booze is expensive, public transport is appaling and in summer if often gets soo hot you can't leave the house or air conditioned office. No wonder Australia has the highest skin cancer rate in the world.
We seemed to get a lot of 'Isn't Australia wonderful?' and I'd just say 'Yeah, it's alright'. The man-made stuff is generally rubbish bar Sydney and Melbourne. The beaches are enormous, beautiful and not very crowded on the whole. There are animals everywhere you go, which can make things interesting. But Aboriginies are largely ignored and put into the shadows. We didn't see one on the East coast. Very odd.
There's an advert by the national tourism of Australia board that says 'Where the bloody well are ya?'. Meaning why aren't you in Australia. I reply 'I'm somewhere better'. And that's it. But saying that I'd still go back.
The Great Ocean was a major highlight, as was Uluru, and I think going more North than Brisbane and seeing the islands and the barrier reef would be stunning too. Well, that's how it looks in the photos.
But Australia doesn't quite live up to the hype and I don't completely know why.

Back to Brisbane

Why is it that all the Wicked Campervans look better and newer than ours?!
Anyway we arrived back in Brisbane and had 3 nights to check out this supposed laid back city.
Our hostel is good, it just feels strange again to be back in a proper bed!
No matter how much you look at a map of Brisbane not one bit of it will show you how bloody steep some of the streets are. Why did no-one tell me this!? Added to the fact that during the day it gets to around 35 degrees celcius makes walking around pretty hard work.
To be honest by this stage I was ready for a change and wanted to leave Australia. Not that I hated or anything it's just I was ready to move on. Still, I was going to give Brisbane a chance.
A small Chinatown area(again a huge Chinese population in another city, how come they don't live anywhere else? oh yes, money) was ok and we got an average meal in there. Next day we headed out to see what looked like a really cool park area. It was too. Roma Street Parkland. Thing is getting there wasn't easy. The map again failed to notify my of the incredibly steep streets we had to plod up to get there. Damn it! Once there we strolled around the tropical lush forest areas next to water fountains, palm trees, exotic bushes and a small river. Not bad, not brill. Frickin hot either way.
By this stage I'd become a complete coffee addict. Iced coffee that is, it's too hot for a warm one. Australia has a great selection of iced coffee and everyday I make it my duty everyday whilst filling up the van to buy some, Paul's Coffee and Farmers Union are the bast but from state to state they don't sell the same stuff. Not sure why anyone would care but there you go. Suffice to say we ended up spending a bit of time in various coffee shops doing nowt and preparing for the next destination.
There are some nice looking buildings here, such as the old Customs house, that have mostly been renovated and changed into restaurants, bars or University buildings.
The quirky art thing of this place is that all the electricity boxes, you see them in England all the time and they are all green, are sprayed up with different random art and drawings. Why not.
Across the river near the arena where we saw Tori Amos is a strange mix of stuff. Quite good aswell. There's a man-made beach area, under renovation at the time but a great idea I thought. Near that was a tropical forest with bamboo and a boardwalk leading to a Nepalese temple. A bit surreal but very well built. Did no-one notice all the naked carvings of various sexual acts? It was clear to see this was a fertility temple, if you get my drift. This was all built was for the 1988 world Expo that was held in Brisbane. I beginging to see why, it's quite a nice place.
Away from the temple was a 'lifestyle' market. Which just means a hippy market to me. It was pretty good though as there was an excellent Spanish guitar player there. He was shreading it up outstide an old colonial style building that made us instantly think about the South American adventure to come! If it was for the zombie brained lumps asking us for a 'fag' without even a please or thank you I'd think more of the place. I tell thee, manners are lost on a large portion of these people.
There's a decent shopping and bar street but it's a pity they've obscured the great looking buildings housing the shops with a giant metal frame thingy.
Brisbane isn't a great place, it's not a bad place either. The main areas, of which there are 3, are too far apart for my liking so we ended up doing a massive amount of walking in baking heat. It's disjionted but I'm sure if you lived here you'd have a bus pass or something. Laid back this place is not. Cars screw down every street and if you don't move away from traffic lights within a nano-second of them turning green you're garaunteed to get an earful of horn!
Our time in Oz was over. A bit of reflection perhaps?

Surfing in Straddie

We'd read and heard a bit about an island off the mainland near Brisbane that sounded pretty good so we decided to head off there. North Stradbroke Island, or Straddie as everyone seems to call it, was a dull and expensive ferry ride away but the promise of unbuilt up beaches and quality surf sounded too good. Apperently its big whale spotting country too but we saw not a one.
We drove for a while to get to a full to bursting campsite with no room. Off to another one we went and that was pretty full but we managed to bag a decent spot that fit both our vans. It turns out that it was the start of the school holidays and the place was rammed with brainless kids. At 15 or 16 most of them can drive so they take the opportunity to go across to Straddie to get lashed and go surfing. It's practically lawless too as there isn't enough police on the island to cope. It's only a small place and has but 1 main road.
Still it seemed pretty idillic with some good looking beaches and practically no houses and built up areas.
That night we started a fire, a mistake in Oz as they're scared to death of forest fires, and after an hour or so were told by a park warden to put it out. A real shame really that some people can't control fires and therefore spoil it for the rest of us. Ah well, surfing tomorrow.
Hiring a board was a bit of a problem and quite extortionate but I got one anyway. We went out and got totally mashed by the harsh waves. Still it was a nice place to be if not totally exhausting.
After some food we headed to another beach. We knew we would have a chance because small kids were out surfing!!
Much better surf action but somehow, when there was practically only me and Matt out on the waves, I managed to get on a classic wave only to come crashing down on Matt. His board my head, my board his head. Oh the joys of surfing. No harm done though.
The evening was full of drunk kids throwing up and fighting, not too near us thankfully, but it was still pretty cool to be out of the hustle and bustle of a big high rise tourist place like Surfers Paradise.
Mainly got battered by waves again the next morn on yet another good looking beach. We stuffed our faces with Fish and Chips and then bemoaned the fact that we'd have to give the van back the next day. Although it has 'issues' as the woman at Wicked Campers said, it was still so good just being able to go where you like when you like and not have to carry bags around or bother too much about accomodation. Now that the weather was much hotter it was way better too. The end of an era and back to backpacking, we weren't looking forward to it.
This also meant the end of our 2 and a half month stint in Australia. Nearly. We still had 3 nights at a hostel in Brisbane before flying to New Zealand.
Back on the ferry and on to Brisbane with Matt and Casey. Cleaned out the van that night and packed our bags. The petrol had been a nightmare, the van was freezing when we were down south, it looked crap and the stereo worked sparodically but we could forgive it all for the freedom it gave us. Not having to rely on public transport, especially in Oz, was brilliant. But it had to end and the next morning we dropped the van off, donned our backpacks and got a taxi to a hostel for the first time in 52 days! Boo!

Surfers what?

Now I'd heard Surfers Paradise was a built up place but I wasn't expect huge apartment blocks right next to the beach just like Benidorm. I mean the beach itself is gorgeous and incredibly long. It does seem odd that Australia has soo many great beaches with no-one on there and you arrive at another not-so-special beach to be confronted with thousands of people milling around.
We stopped one night and surfed the next morning before moving on, I got absolutely battered by the waves. It felt like being in a tumble dryer. They say Surfers has a harsh shore dump, meaning that if you're close to the beach when you're on a wave the likelihood is that you're going over the top of you board head first into the spin cycle in shallow water. Not a nice experience.
Paradise this is not. Maybe if you like shopping, and granted there are loads of bars here but we've been spoilt by Byron and many many many better places all over Oz.
In it's heyday in the 50's Surfers wasn't built up and was a prime surfer dudes hangout. There are still some around but this is now mainly tourist paradise and it seems other places in this state, Queensland, are heading the same way. Where ever the money will be the council will pass the plans for as many high rises as neccessary.
What did look cool though was the coming of the Indy 500. This is the American version of Formula One and here they race on the streets. It's a shame we'd be out of the country when that was on but you can't time everything right.
Driving out of Surfers with an air of disappointment we spotted 3 water parks that looked fab, but not for our wallets. Besides, the wicked van convoy was heading off to an island for some real surf action, we hoped.

Ballroom blitz

We screwed the van up to Brisbane to catch Tori Amos in concert. We bought the tickets in Perth when we saw a poster in our hostel for the tour 2 and a half months back.
Brisbane seemed a nice place for the one night we were there but we knew we would return as that's where we would fly out to New Zealand from.
Over a wide river is all the arts, music and theatre stuff of Brisbane. This is where the gig was even though it took us ages to find the actual venue. It was quite a large place and reminiscent of the Guild Hall in Preston, but on a grander scale.
One main reason we couldn't find the place was that there were loads of people dressed up milling around and we thought there must've been another event on. Turns out they were all watching Tori Amos. Now I've been to many a gig in my time but I've never seen soo many people wearing suits, ballgowns and general going out on the town clothes. We were probably the scruffiest people there. It was very odd to to a quite rock-based concert with a bunch of people really dressed up and acting a bit stiff to be honest.
Nevertheless it was a great gig and just brilliant to get out and see some live music on a large scale.
Next day we headed back south to Surfers Paradise to meet up with Matt and Casey for a surf.
The odd thing that struck me about the east coast of Oz is the constant complaining about the lack of water they have with seemingly little resolution. Before we arrived in Brisbane it had been in a state of flood and it rained whilst we were there very heavily. Not sure where all this water is going but it was forcing us into 3 minute showers at campsites damn it!

Beautiful Byron

I was dying to get to Byron Bay for the surf and we'd heard the town itself is pretty laid back and cool. On the way though there was a couple of things of note, sort of. We were entering Banana country so sooner or later we were going to see a large banana at the side of the road, obviously. The big banana we saw was outside a restaurant and was in fact the first 'big thing' in Australia. All others were spawned from this wacky start up. We also saw a huge oyster ontop of a car showroom, it couldn't have been more ugly. Oh yes and a big shrimp and a big prawn, the things people do to get the tourists in.
We ventured through a Scottish town on the way to Byron, Maclean. Every lamp post in town had been painted with a different style of tartan representing different Scottish families. This was also the only place in Oz where we saw a Spar shop!? They also have a Scotland day here, all quite surreal but alright. The area around is beautiful. Vast cornfields and a wide river suddenly become tropical forest as the banana growing areas really kick in. The more north in Oz you get the more bananas they grow, so we heard.
We stopped off at a couple of famous surf spots to watch the experienced guys do their stuff as well as take in more amazing looking beaches before arriving at Byron Bay.
First night we were not impressed, our campsite was a bit dull and the town seemed a bit snooty. A lot of people thinking they were uber cool.
The next day we changed sites, rented a surf board and the whole place began to make sense. In Byron there's a kind of hippy thing going on, lots of people walk around bare foot and dreadlocks and not washing seem quite popular. Admittedly the town didn't impress at first the main beach did. We watched the sun go down to the sound of Japanese drummers and the sight of very good surfers negotiating their way around a shipwreck. This could be pretty good.
The main bit of proper information I've got about Byron Bay is that it's got about 4 beaches, one around the corner which almost garuantees surf everyday on one of them. It's point, where the Lighthouse is, is the most easterly point of Australia so if see a map of Oz it's the bit sticking out on the far right half way up.
Upon leaving for the surf the next morning a couple we met in Port Macquarie came onto our site. Pretty cool as the guy, Matt wanted to come out surfing too. We agreed to meet up.
A cracking day in the surf, not too good on the teeth though. For the past 2 or 3 weeks I'd had hit and miss toothache. I think it started in Melbourne when I bit down on some cheap museli from a major Oz supermarket, Coles. There was a really hard bit that I wasn't expecting. Anyway, this came and went for a while and hurt most after and during food so it was becoming a pain. I thought I may have dislodged a tooth and was leaving it to see if it came right.
That night we ate some cracking food at a local pub and watched a bit of live folk music which was really good. My mouth was really hurting at this point though so enjoying the food was becoming difficult.
Our new campsite was more rough and ready but much livelier, and it was right on the main beach so you could walk to the surf. There's the odd rogue around town and very washed up and spaced out dudes too, dancing to shop music in the street and so forth. But apart from the odd wako it was pretty good, but expensive.
That day I went out surfing with Matt and his girlfriend Casey. It was tough going but not too bad. A good laugh either way, until I got back to the van. All of a sudden I got this monster pain in my mouth and head. This is probably the worst pain I've ever had and it wouldn't go away. We'd arranged to go out round town with Matt and Casey that night, along with another couple they'd met, so I didn't want to miss out. But it was time to go to the hospital.
At the hospital they advised us of the best dentist to go to in town the next day. I was thinking I may have to have a tooth pulled out!
I soldiered on that night, the booze definitely helped, and we ended up having a cracking night even if we did spend an insane amount of cash. One club we were in was tiny but still some strange characters were having a real life dance off! It was hilarious. One guy said to me 'this is how we do it you know, this is street.' I just couldn't stop laughing,
The next day I had to get to a dentist, the pain was obscene, and I didn't care about the money. Turns out the dentist was a Brit and a really nice guy. He checked my tooth and took an x-ray, with a finger tip size x-ray pad that showed up instantly on a monitor I could see, aswell as on his pc. The technology was way more advanced than England. He also used a small camera to look in my mouth that showed up on the tv screen. I was well impressed. He cleaned some enamel from my tooth and advised me to give it a few days. But then he asked my if my tooth was still hurting and I said yes. It all came down to me needing root canal. Or root therapy as he called it. He said I could put it off but as I'd soon be in South America this could be a dangerous mistake. I went for it. He drilled the inside of my tooth out and injected my gums about 8 times. This wasn't too bad but I could see on the tv screen the before and after shots. Tooth looking ok, tooth with giant hole in it! It was a bit like Clockwork Orange, I had clamps and rubber thingies shoved in my ever open mouth. Once he filled the tooth in again (he drilled it out to get rid of the nerve ending within which was under pressure causing me severe pain) everything was fine and although it was only temporary he said it might last till I get home. $200 Australian dollars was a small price to pay, and considerably less than England, so I hear, so it wasn't all bad. I couldn't feel my face but it was definitely time to go surfing!
A much better days surf, helped not having brain pain, at another good looking beach. The great thing here is that nothing is built up over two storeys so no high rise blocks exist and a couple of the beaches have nothing but a tree lined backdrop. Pretty lush. The hippy council here have a tight control on shops and things like apartment or holiday home building. They even stopped MacDonalds from opening a store here. That's all well and good, no large coporate companies ruining local business, but when you're on a budget it's a killer. The local shops charge what they like and more often than not it's extortionate. Where's a 7-11 convenience store when I need one!
A BBQ with the two Brit couples that night rounded off a good few days, I think we ended up staying 5 nights and it was really good to go out and have a laugh with some like minded people.
We went out surfing on some rough surf on the longest beach I have ever seen the next day. You could'nt even see the end of it. Unfortunately the rip was unreal and it ended dragging me and Matt way down the beach. We got out of the water and walked back for about 20 minutes just to get to the point were we got in the sea, dangerous stuff if you're not careful.
In the end we loved Byron. It was soo laid back and the options for a great beach were always there. It lived more up to the Austrlian dream than most places we'd seen so far but the amount of money we spent, and the fact we had to get to Brisbane for a Tori Amos concert, meant we had to move on.
Byron also seemed to be Wicked Campervan heaven, if you like that kind of thing. We must've seen 20 or so different vans all sprayed with various images from pictures of The Eagles and Iron Maiden, to The Simpsons and Eminem. At least we didn't stand out like a Jamaican at a Nazi convention here.
All good things must come to an end, although we do agree to meet up with Matt and Casey in Surfers Paradise to see if the name is all that it says it is.

From blue mountains to blue waters

We were halfway near the Blue Mountains anyway so heading there after Sydney didn`t take too long. Katoomba is the main town with the views of the `3 sisters`. These are a collection of vertical rocks that are alongside a cliff edge. You can walk down and out to them on a boardwalk, which we did, but we couldn`t stay for too long due to the extortionate parking fees there. Katoomba is an odd place. Its main industry from day one was tourism so they`re well versed in extracting cash from the thousands of people that visit here every year. In fact I think they`ve made soo much money, probably from parking alone, that they don`t know what to do with it. Just going to the toilet you notice the cubicles are solid granite. It`s a real shame because on the great ocean road you can visit the 12 apostles for free and look round at your leisure. Here they`ve got plenty of walks available but all at a cost. The view is stunning. It`s a huge canyon that is `blue`, sort of, due to the mist coming from the lush hills within.
We headed a bit farther north to see some views for free and have a walk round. Equally impressive were views from Blackheath. This is where you can walk, or bike, right down into the vast valley below. Unfortunately at the begining of the year a fire raged across the basin and most paths and tracks were closed. Astonishing views though, with the odd waterfall pouring down the void. Australia can`t help but impress on a natural level.
We were going to stay the night in Katoomba but it turns out all the caravan parks are locally run and overpriced. We headed back to Sydney and the coast, where it was much much warmer!
We drove into the night along the Princes Highway, a pretty cool road in itself. It got seriously bendy as the night came in and we realised that the state of New South Wales is the first state we`ve been in that everybody consistently brakes the speed limit and tail gates you. No relaxed laid back people here. But saying that we soon came accross a few and they were all partaking in what seems an incredibly popular sport, fishing. We stopped overnight in a fishermans haven, The Entrance. A strange name for a place but once the morning came it was beautiful. Loads of `tinnies`(small metal boats) were out on the pristine waters alongside plenty of beardy fisherman types on the shore. We ate breakfast by the water in the morning sun and, as quite often it seems in Australia, if the day starts sunny it ends sunny.
Over a low bridge and on through many a coastal town along one of the many `tourist drives`that are signposted along our route. One not so tourist town of which I cant remember the name, probably because we drove through it soo fast, was not a place i`d let the tourists see. A grim factory overshadowed the whole town and when stopping to let some odd looking, foot dragging, 3 toothed gawping local accross the road we realised this was not the place for us. Thankfully the tourist route took us right up to the flame spewing factory, oh good theres even a viewing platform where you can watch the flames and black smoke pour into the air. Nice. I think it was an energy plant or steelworks, not totally uncommon with it`s Biritish namesake down the road, Newcastle.
Newcastle was a large convict town, a large steel monument reading `convict` near the center lays testament to its past. And like Newcastle, the real one in England, its also a coal producer, or was I forget. The main difference between the anglo and the antipodean is the beach. Now Im sure i`ve heard that theres a beach and even surf near Newcastle but I doubt theres any days of the year when bikini clad girls and burly blokes hit the beach for a sunbathe and a bbq in England!
The aforementioned factory still loomed in the distance, along with the odd industrial ship. But the beach looked great. It was the strangest sand ive ever walked on, it actually hurt the feet a bit. It felt like walking on warm ice cracking underfoot if that makes sense!
We ended up in the small town of Karuah Jetty. Which was pretty much all there was to it, a jetty. Sun glistened crystal clear water veiws across a large bay which was also a mecca for fisherman. Karuah Jetty was a small but nice little place. As we left across another water hugging bridge we spotted a huge cock and balls drawn in a sandbank next to the bridge as a lasting reminder for all who pass through.
A few more towns passsed until we headed upto a place called Seal Rocks. This is where the largest fur seal population of Oz lives. We didn`t see any as they were round the corner from an amazingly beautiful beach. Getting there was an experience, driving for about 10km through tropical forest and all of a sudden the road is totally unpaved for 2kms and then paved again up until the beach. Odd. We walked along, me totally white from neck down, admiring the surf and the volcanic rock on the beach. A beautiful day, the water was so clear we even saw small schools of fish inside and jumping out of waves. It was perfect. Until. As we were leaving the beach I stubbed my toe and a bit of broken tarmac that served as the entrance to the beach. It took a sizeable chunk of flesh from my toe and I instantly began to go dizzy and almost faint. I lay in the van trying not to pass out, yes I know Im soft when it comes to seeing my own blood. Thankfully we have 2 first aid kits with us with gauze and antiseptic strips so all was soon sorted by Laura. Looks like surfing, driving and walking are out of the question for the next few days. A shame seeing as we`re about to hit more surfing country at Byron Bay.
For now we stopped at the strangely popular, and first apartment blocked town we`d seen, Port Macquarie. A nice enough place and seemingly a holiday destination for many, judging by the high prices! We met a cool British couple their too, also in a Wicked Campervan. Turns out not all campervans are total heaps, some even have doors that lock properly and aren`t cold at night. We were pretty jealous.
Alongside our campsite was a breakwall built by convicts. For some reason people had taken to painting the large rocks facing inland with various types of art or messages. Some funny and really good, others totally crap. We soon realised why Port Macquarie was soo popluar. After another morning sat watching the waves we took a look at two out of about 5 beaches and coves this place had. We took a short walk, hobbling with my injured toe, down to another desserted beach with a solitary surfer in on the waves. This is when we noticed the rather large lizard in our path. It slithered down the boardwalk and bounded onto the nearby rocks. We went for a closer inspection. It looked at one point that the lizard was watching the surfer, I got the photo to prove it. We then spotted something the surfer also spotted at the same time, a dolphin! I`d never seen one in the wild before let alone one jumping through waves next to a surfer. At this point our good old friend the lizard was joined by another equally large liazard. At the exact same moment both lizards turned to face us. We didn`t like the look of this. They can move fast and rock hopped their way over to us. We turned and made a sharp, hobble, back to the van. I don`t need this. The place is like a zoo, I know I keep saying it but it is! In England you can go for a walk and not even think about being attacked by wildlife! Way back in Mount Gambier and Aussie told us that Guanas, large lizards, crawl up you when they are afraid thinking that you`re a tree. His advice was to lie down so they run directly over you and don`t tear your eyes out. This was on my mind at the time all the way back to the van. It`s like walking on to the set of jurassic park sometimes, but with surfers!
At this point I wanted to get on up the coast to the hallowed Byron Bay. We`d read a bit and heard plenty about this place, shame that surfing may be out of the equation.