The post I never wanted to write.....fin!

That possibly has to be the quickest year in recorded history. Nic and I were still in disbelief that we were boarded a plane heading for ‘London’ a week ago, and we’re still shell shocked that our trip is over! It’s weird being back home where we have the convenience of toilets in close proximity, a comfortable bed, and we don’t wake up next to each other. Although the trip has been a lot of fun, to think back we have done some amazing stuff. Not many people can claim to have driven 30 000km around the entire length and breadth of Australia (without breaking down!), gone diving on the Great Barrier Reef, snowboarded in New Zealand and walked the Great Wall of China. Slightly better than your average weekend in Maidstone! Thanks so much for reading this blog, I hope you have enjoyed it as we have had a so much fun creating it and we’re very sad that it’s over! Southern hemisphere, you may now breathe a sigh of relief.

China

Not a word

5 days before home we flew from Auckland to Beijing, to finish off the trip in style by checking out China’s capital. Having been in English speaking environments since Christmas, we knew China would render conversing with the locals slightly tougher, but the ‘no I don’t want to buy your souvenir toot’ technique that we had perfected in Thailand, was sure to do us proud. Arriving late on a Wednesday night we decided to get a taxi to our hostel, given that we didn’t have a clue where it was and the address sounded more like the menu at my local China Chef takeaway. Showing the taxi driver the address of the hostel was met with blank looks and general dialogue that needed subtitling. Here is where we realise that it wasn’t written in Chinese and they couldn’t understand our fancy Western text. Like our wily Thai friends, the fact that he didn’t know the destination didn’t deter him and we got in the car and drove. He was a nice man though, and we chatted the whole journey. We may have both been speaking different languages but I felt we both knew the score. Next thing I know he interrupts our scintillating chat and phones a friend that could speak English, and I read out the address in my best Chinese. It was never going to work given that her English wasn’t that great, and I couldn’t pronounce ‘Changchunjie’. So we carry on and eventually we magically make it to the right area, stopping a few times bang in the middle of the road for us to get out and look, looking back now I have no idea why we bothered as there was no English written anywhere so we could have been standing right next to it and still not have a clue. Eventually we made it and found our hostel where we were 2 of 5 Westerners staying there!

Great Wall!

Taking a well earned break

They didn't mention this in the brochure!

Amazzzzzzzzzzing!

We booked a tour to the Great Wall of China which consisted of a 4 hour bus ride full of all the other ‘whiteys’ in Beijing, ending up at the Wall in one of the quieter parts with fewer tourists. First of all we got a cable car up to the wall and immediately you get this view of the wall that spans as far as the eye can see, it was awesome. The idea was to walk 10km to another part of the wall, Simitai, taking in all the views and climbing up all the dodgy parts of the wall! All of a sudden we were joined by some Mongolian women who were offering to take our photos and claiming that we were ‘beautiful lady’ and we knew that they weren’t exactly out to take in the views. The followed us like leeches for the first 10 minutes, helping us up and down the steps, and then we realised that they were trying to sell us crappy souvenirs that they produced from their bags. We said we weren’t interested and before you can say egg fried rice they had disappeared! The yanks didn’t quite get wise to them and they were pursued for a good hour to be offered an ‘I walked the great wall’ t shirt! The walk was really really tough, most bits were badly maintained and some bits had just…fallen away! We made it though and it was definitely worth it for the views that we got to see of the wall!

Sight seeing in Beijing!

Acrobatics show

Summer Palace

Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven

Bird's Nest!

As a city, Beijing offers a lot for tourists and we just about made it all in our 5 days there. First of all we went to Tian’anmen Square, which has a bit of a sad history, but was gateway to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is closed off from the rest of Beijing by huge walls, and was home to the emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Compared to Oz and NZ, its nice to be somewhere with such a long history, dating back to the 13th and 14th century, the city was very impressive. We had an audio guide that meant we had some clue as to what building was what, and we spent the whole afternoon in there. The next day we mastered the subway and made it to the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium and the water cube. We paid to get inside the stadium, alongside 50 million Chinese people, and had a look around. It was really awesome to see it so soon after the Olympics and the architecture was pretty cool. Then it was on to the Temple of Heaven, which is a tall temple that can be seen all round Beijing, and is where people used to prey for all sorts of things, but I’m pretty certain it was mostly for good harvests. Well, that’s what I could fathom from my Chinese translation! Finally we made it to the Summer Palace, which is a huge park which is home to a temple and a large lake. It was a beautiful place and we were there just as the sun was setting, watching people taking boat rides, or flying kites or just…hanging around! On our last night we went to a Chinese acrobatics show which was so awesome! There was jumping through hoops, spinning plates and general crazy feats of flexibility! It was a good way to end the trip.

Lost in translation

Fan no 1

Fan no 2

Fan nos 3 and 4

Given that Beijing has only just closed the doors on its Olympics, we thought that as Westerners we would be well catered for. It was becoming increasingly clear however, that no one spoke English here and the way of life was very different. I’m not just talking about the squat toilets. To be honest, the Chinese really have no need to concern themselves with the rest of the world, as walking down the street we were the only non ‘slitty eyed’ (as my PC Mum would say) for miles around, and so there would be no real need to learn another language. Add into the mix that their language consists of symbols that you can’t even hazard a guess at the meaning, and Nic and I had problems. It really is incredible being in a situation like that where you are just so unlike the rest of the population and everything is completely foreign to you.

Going out for food was fast becoming a real test. And we were getting hungry. We suddenly had a new found empathy for people who can’t read, struggling to even recognise a restaurant from a brothel as we couldn’t understand the signs outside. When we were successfully inside what we thought was a restaurant, we then had to mime that we wanted to see the menu, with the universal hand sign of opening and closing your hands. It worked a treat. But then the menu is all written in Chinese. How do you know if you’re ordering turtle or duck tongue? So we could only go to restaurants that had picture menus, the sign of someone who’s truly illiterate! Even then the choice of food was a bit dodgy, we were afraid of dog, but I would have gladly served up a plate of Fido rather the Alligator blood and sea cucumber that they had on offer. After making a ‘safe’ choice of meal we fancied a beer, which we asked for, and received a carton of milk. So Nic goes up to the bar and simply points at the beer she wants from the display cabinet. So she gets that beer! Yes, I mean that beer, as in the display copy. THEN we are faced with the trauma of learning how to use chopsticks, I seemed to learn faster than Nic though, who after battling with her egg fried rice gets offered a fork by one of the attentive waitresses! Eating out shouldn’t be this hard!

Being on the road for a year now we have made a name for ourselves. It was about time that someone had sat up and took notice. That ‘someone’, my friends, is the entire nation of China. It was difficult to walk down the street without being stared at by the locals, which I guess we put down to the fact that we looked different, and weren’t spitting in the street (common practice in China, nice). But it seemed much more than just a passing inquisitiveness, it was as if we were celebs. People actually stopped us and asked us to have our photos taken with them countless times. At one point a big group of girls got their cameras out and they all, one by one, wanted their photos with us! We’re like, ssssssssso big in China right now.

Waitomo black water rafting!

On 3, fake a smile!

Nic looks like a PRO!

Believe it or not there is a hole down there that we fit into!

Even in practice I work the pout

Can you believe it, everyone was English except Patrick

So far we have counted that we have done 51 of the 101 Must Dos for Kiwis, so in our last few days we decided to do the 52nd, the Waitomo caves. These caves are a series of underground caves that go on for quite some distance, and have a stream running through it, and full of amazing glowworms! We met up again with Patrick, our American friend from Napier, as he had done the trip before and wanted to do it again. We got kitted out in wetsuits and boots and helmets and even balaclavas, to finish off our sexy ensemble. The start of the morning involved an abseil to enter the caves, through the teeny tiniest of holes. So we had to make our way town the 37m rope to the bottom of the cave, which we mastered! Then we had a 'flying fox', which is where you're attached to a zip line and you travel from one side of the cave to the other, in complete dark, except for the ceiling being alight with glowworms. Then we each grabbed a rubber ring and had to jump in the freezing water, still sat on the ring, and we made our way upstream. We turned all our lights off and just floated back just taking in all the light of the glowworms, it was crazy! We got rid of the rings and then it was just walking, and sliding, and going on our hands and knees through caves, trying not to get swept away by the water! It was awesome, and even finished off by climbing up 2 waterfalls, which I now realise, is possible....especially when you have a guide to push your bum up the cave wall, for that extra much needed boost!

Return to Rotorua

Face mask anyone?!?!

Bubblin' mud baby!

At least this girl went to the trouble of being authentic and got her face tatooed

If you look carefully you can see the white guy, sorry, authentic Maori, on the right

The Haka, sans Japs

Just before they saw my potential and snagged me out of the crowd

After the Rihanna concert we had a week left until we leave NZ, so we decided to revisit one of the places that we thought we hadn't quite 'done'. The lucky town was Rotorua, the smelliest town in NZ as it has sulphur fumes coming from every nook and cranny as its rife with geothermal activity. It was also the scene of our previous 'Zorb' triumph. One of the things that we were still keen to do in NZ was 'something Maori'. Rotorua is the place to do that as they have cultural perfomances and 'hangi' (aka banquet) in various locations, whether it be in an actual Maori village or on stage in a hotel. Given funds, we opted for the hotel idea. It was slightly odd though when we turned up at the Heritage hotel, given that we were the only ones there in a room off about 200 seats. Never to worry though as after half an hour 50 million Japanese tourists turned up, clicking their cameras. When we were all seated the perfomance began, with 4 women and 4 men in loin cloths and such took to the stage and danced and waggled their tongues at us. The ladies showed us a 'poi' dance (twirling balls of twine on the end of a piece of string) and they needed willing participants to come on stage and demonstrate. I still can't figure out now how I got picked. Me and 3 Japs took to the stage and tried to copy our maori 'wahine', as Nic filmed on, trying to keep the camera still through all the laughter. The highlight has to be when they had 4 Japanese guys on stage perfoming the Haka, complete with tongues out and enthusiatic slapping of thighs. I think the whole thing would have been a lot better if it lasted longer than half an hour, all the performers weren't laughing, and one of the guys wasn't white. Nevertheless, after our half hour treat we got a three course meal 'traditionally prepared' of course, and we most definitely had our fill, given that we were the last ones left in there.

The next day we had free entry to Hell's Gate thermal reserve, which was a Maori owned area the had plenty of steaming sulphur pools and bubbling mud! Some of the temperatures were over 200 degrees, steamy! We disobeyed some of the rules and we stole some mud, given that they were packaging it up in their gift shop and selling it as face masks for $10, woops!

Rihanna and Chris Brown baby!

Rihanna, for goodness sake put some clothes on

Chris Brown and his 'gangstas', post descending from the ceiling, as you do!

We got to Auckland in time for the concert to end all concerts....Rihanna and Chris Brown! On entering the stadium, I won't lie, Nic and I felt old. I guess I didn't realise that the average Chris Brown fan is roughly 12, and comes complete with the obligatory market job printed T-shirt with him showing off his bling. Oh and we also felt very white. Once we were in though we put our concerns aside and the starting act was some fat dude 'spinnin some tuuuuuunes'! After a while Chris Brown was out on stage, to a sea of screams. Everytime he flexed his abs or showed the crowd his bum the screams reached frequencies only intelligible by dolphins. At least we could laugh at that cos he was really hamming it up and finding it funny himself i think. His show was really really good though, he was accompanied by a DJ that filled in all the dodgy changing-into-a-tighter-vest moments and his dancing was awesome. He even came down from the ceiling at the start, the CEILING! The best bit was a Michael Jackson tribute where we donned a red jacket and did all the classic MJ moves, and it was really a great show. Then after a half an hour gap Rihanna came out, wearing pretty much nothing but a hood. Ok, sorry she was wearing underwear, and a large hood. She sung all the classics as well as a few lame ones, and gradually she did manage to put on a few more clothes. She was pretty good because her singing is awesome, but to be honest compared to Chris Brown her show wasn't as good. They ended by singing 'Umbrella' together though which was a good finale! And then everyone went home, and it was WAY past their bedtimes.

Mt Taranaki and van trauma

The extent of the meteorite hit

Mt Taranaki

In case you thought we had had enough of mountains, we haven't. On our trip up from Wellington we pulled off from Stratford (named after Shakespeare's birth place) and headed to Mt Taranaki. It pretty much rises up out of nowhere and is really impressive and to top it off, snow capped. Beautiful! We did a couple of walks and then headed North on our mission to get to Auckland for the Rihanna concert! In the process our windscreen got hit by a stone and caused a chip about 50p in diameter. I start panicking and worrying we're not covered on the insurance, which Nic assured me we were, and so I calmed down. Then we get hit by a small meteorite and the chip is about 20cm wide, and growing. Concerned by the time the crack when from the top to the bottom of the screen, we called the rental company. Now when our rental company, Britz, were starting out, they decided not to descriminate in their initial staff selections, and employed all the idiots that they could find in the greater Auckland area. After being transferred and hung up on a few times we speak to a 'person' and they tell us instead of getting it fixed, we have to change vans. So within a day we had to say goodbye to our beloved and move all our stuff into an OLDER MODEL!!!!!!!! Sob sob. It's different. We want our old home back.

What to do when your wasting a week in Wellington

Ah Kristov, with this fine Vodka you are really spoiling us

8.2 and not a percent less!

In a week and a bit's time, we're heading back home, but spending 5 days in China on the way. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that we realised we might need to apply for a visa to be allowed in for a Chinese takeaway in Beijing. So after a lot of research and lost in translation emails we went to the Chinese Embassy to apply for our visa, stopping in error on the way to knock on some Chinese man's house who greeted us in his slippers, but in the end turned out to be the Finance Minister. All our forms we completed, my occuption was listed as 'traveller' and we hoped for the best. But we had to wait 5 days to pick it up. So we had to hang around the Wellington area for that time, stopping off in various tiny towns on the way, the highlight being seeing the Greytown WI partaking in a mid week line dancing lesson in the village hall. Masterton was a gem. We walked around the town for a while, perusing all the $2 shops and admiring the 'Calven Klain' imports direct from our next destination no doubt. This led to a lot of hanging about, and what better to do when hanging about than have a good drink. Being a the end of the trip we are short on funds and so needed a drink that was a) cheap b) strong c) in large quantity. A trip down to New World supermarket and they did not dissapoint, in amongst the 'Grannypash' and 'Passion Pop' we found 'Scrumpy'. Like our cider at home, but 8.2%. Into the trolley she goes. After we had had our fill of cider we then thought we'd head for a spirit. The Antipodeans are very good at putting drink in boxes, and we found a 'Kristov' vodka and orange 3litre mix that hit the spot. By Friday we had our visas, and aching heads.

Glaciers!

The bit you can see is about 15km long, HUGE!

Nic enjoying an icy hole!

Ultimate glacier geeks

This crevasse is about 40m deep

Studying glaciers at uni was like a slow and painful death, especially when it consists of a lisping lecturer by the name of Jane Hart going on about them in her monotone voice. Seeing glaciers up close though is so awesome! We went to 2, the Fox Glacier (birthplace of the glacier mint?!?!?!) and Franz Josef glacier. These 2 are only of 3 in the world that reach down to the sea and into the rainforest, and their speed of movement is also impressive, at up to 5 metres a day. How cool is that! Simply having a look at the glacier doesn't do it justice, as you can not grasp how huge it is, even my photos don't really show how big it is. So we decided to go on a guided glacier walk of Franz Josef, where we were fitted out with 'crampons' to walk on the ice, and taken round by our guide Rob, from err...Hull. We had an initial climb up the end of the glacier which took about 30 minutes just to get off of the front of the wall of ice. Then we had a walk around the glacier looking into 40 metre crevasses and sliding through holes in the ice, it was incredible! Even our guide was carving out our route on the ice with a pick axe, we were like proper adventurers!

Queenstown and Wanaka, SHRED THE NARN!

Lake Wanaka

Nic demonstrating falling leaf, her favourite

Yes, we know we look bad, our outfits were RENTED!

Queenstown is a massive backpacker hang out, as it is full of outdoor activities. If you want to do a bungy, throw yourself out of a plane or go on a death defying boat trip then this is the place. Nic and I, went to the cinema. Ha ha! Our excuse is that is rained pretty much constantly for 2 days and not wanting to part with $200 to nearly kill yourself we were happy to sit back and watch everyone else do it! We went along to watch the bungy, at which point Nic decided to start umming and ahhing about whether to do it. Then she wanted to do a tandem with me. Good god. The art of bungy isn't exactly hard, you just need to throw yourself off into a river, ah! So eventually we decided to save our money for better things, namely Wanaka! Wanaka was a bit like Queenstown but not as big and less touristy. Fortunately I have a friend that I used to work in la Plagne with when I did my ski season, who works the ski patrol on the mountain. So we met up with Paul who was awesome, and gave us free lift passes (legend) and up to Cardrona it was! It was a bit weird though, as we're used to lifts that start right outside your hotel, in NZ, you have to drive 40 minutes, drive a death defying climb, and then you're at the mountain, where you are greeted by a whopping 3 lifts! Ha ha! It was really good though as they had just had 30cm of fresh snow (freshy to us pros) which was good as it was 3 days until the end of the season. Once we were there we were encouraged to 'SHRED THE NARN!', a phrase that I'll be looking up in my boarder dictionary, but I presume it was a good thing. Given that Nic and I worked in different resorts in France we were both a similar standard so it was awesome boarding together, that is, except from the part where Nic fell and took us both out. What an amateur.

Milford Sound!

Mitre Peak in the background

This was a giant waterfall that sprung out of nowhere

Water gushing down the sides, HUGE!

This was about 40 metres down!

Milford sound, is a must do in NZ, and like all good things, it was miles from anywhere! We started on the journey from Te Anau (craphole where Nic got speeding ticket) and the journey was 2 hours of twists and turns and waterfalls and mountains and dodgy tunnels and Kea birds and general greatness! It was awesome though, as it had just rained the rain was just gushing down the side of the mountains next to you, forming massive waterfalls which were very impressive. We went for a few walks along the way, one to a massive chasm that we stood right over and water was thrashing down it! Then when you reach the sounds, it is just sea meets islands and mountains and waterfalls! Apparently it used to be called Milford Haven, but I presume they missed off the 'haven' when they realised it was nothing like the one in Wales, sorry Dad!

Dunedin

Cadbury world! Those things are full of 'CRUMB'!

Larnach castle

Dunedin station

Dunedin is a small studenty town, home to some of the first Scottish settlers in New Zealand, and of course, Cadbury chocolate NZ. Apparently Dunedin is gaelic for 'Edinburgh', and people even use the word 'wee' over here without needing the toilet. It was a really nice place and had a lot going on, including NZ's only castle, Larnach Castle which we had a good look around. We went a bit tourist crazy one day though and even went to the Cadbury factory, which I have to say is much better than the one in Birmingham, where we got taken round and shown how they make all the choccy goodness, including 'Buttons' and easter eggs. The highlight was at the end when they pour one tonne of melted chocolate down from the top of a huge tower right in front of your eyes, and you attempt not to get splashed, it was awesome! Then to be truly geeky we decided to go on a ghost tour at night. Loving all things Derek Acorah, I wanted the whole thing, a freak who claims to be 'getting something from the spirit world', dressed up in ghost hunting gear (whatever that is). Sure as anything we get some fruit loop sculking out from round a corner coming to meet us and show us round Dunedin and tell us the tales of the dark side! It was pretty tame at first but the scariest bit was right at the end where he takes us down to something that resembles a bomb shelter, where it is the darkest dark that I have ever seen, and the fruit then claims that his torch isn't working because of the spirit forces. Then some chap in the group called 'Amos' starts telling ghost stories. When the light goes on again all you can see is me clamped to Nic afraid to even open my eyes. I'm gonna submit my application to be Derek's next partner/'believer' on Ghosttowns.

Us 1, New Zealand 0

The scene of our triumph

It was only a matter of time until our bad luck had to stop. Still amazed at how people will freely knock on our van to tell us that we had a) parked in the wrong place b) not paid enough money to park in that place c) parked facing the wrong way d) insulted their country by even considering driving our campervan or e) all of the above, we were expecting the worst when Nic was caught speeding. These pesky Kiwi's caught her in an unmarked police car going 66 in a 50kmph zone. Fluttering her eyelids did NOTHING and PC Plod issued a $120 beast of a fine. Spurred on by our annoyance at the hefty fine we tried our hardest to find a way to get out of it. Fortunately Super Cop '08 appeared to be dyslexic. That's right, not only was Nic apparently born in '1938', according to the ticket, she was also accused of driving over 100kmph! We weren't going to lie down and pay the fee so Nic walks into the police station, queries the ticket, and within 2 minutes the Sargeant had cancelled the ticket! Gutted New Zealand! We win!

Mt Cook

There's a little church at Lake Tekapo, check the view!

I know you can't believe it, but it was a lot more turquoise than that!

The Tasman glacier and the iceburgs

A regular sight at Oamaru

We decided to take a different route and get away from the coast and in to to mountains! Not just any mountains! They highest mountains in Australasia! The route towards the area was so beautiful and has these turquoise lakes against snowy mountains for a few hours until you reach Mt Cook national park. We stopped off a few times on the way there at places like Lake Tekapo and it was really nice. By the time we got to Mt Cook it was snowing so stayed the night and tried to do some walking in the morning. Given that we are hardened walkers we took the 15 minute trail up to the Tasman glacier (it was snowing ok!). It was really impressive, and had formed a lake at the end of it, which even had iceburgs floating in it that had broken away from the glacier. After our mammoth walk we headed to a place called Oamaru which has these teeny little blue penguins that come out from the sea at night to rest until 4.30am. So we caught them all coming in from the sea and meeting up with their mates, to, ahem, mate! It was interesting and slightly odd that after this some of them ended up in the car park and nearly runover, whoops!

South Island!

Lady in red

Christchurch cathedral

Marlborough Sounds

Kaikoura

This little pup clearly didn't want to get in the water, but big Mamma had other plans

Hamner Springs thermal pools poster girl

We got the most expensive ferry in the world over to the South Island, that's Wellington to a place called Picton. The journey was really nice as we went through some areas called Marlborough sounds, which were lots of inlets and islands, oh and we had to share the boat with about 50 cows that were in transit. Lovely! When we got off the boat we joined the convoy of campervans heading south and we hit a place called Kaikoura. It was right on the coast and yet had snow capped mountains right by the water, it was a nice sight to wake up to the next day! We had a look around town and found that it has a seal colony so we spent some time harrassing them like the paparazzi as we checked out the seal pups! That day we headed to the aforementioned Hamner Springs, which is a ski resort, but out of season so lacking in snow. Other than conversing with the locals through banging on our van door, we checked out their thermal pools, which are heated by the thermal activity underground. This did redeem the town as they were pretty cool, well up to 40 degrees, and had a nice backdrop of the snowy mountains. Then we made the trip down south to Christchurch, the scene of yet another demise, and had a look around. Supposedly this is one of the most English towns in NZ, and I guess it does qualify given that it has a cathedral. Other than that it was pretty boring and we couldn't find much to do, other than a market where we tried a typical Kiwi dish, Greek Souvlaki!