South Pacific Adventure

20 meters Under the Sea Wrap up

2006-07-22T06:46:34Z

Hello my friend. Where you from? Kentucky? Oh! Fried Chicken!!
That conversation is one thing I won't miss when I'm home.
Well, I'm back in Bangkok now. The rest of the dive course went great. We were in the pool the second day practicing breathing with our regulators, and learning skills etc that would make us more comfortable when we did our actual dives in the ocean. And make no mistake, this was a pool not an "ool" as everyone put their "p" in it. Some more discretely than others. The pool is also where you weed out some of the softies. An Irish lass from my group and a Canadian from another group got a bit claustrophobic and nervous breathing through the hose and practicing taking the goggles off underwater so they dropped out of the course. I took to it pretty easily. As long as you just relax, don't get tense and panic, you'll be fine. The third day we went out and did two actual dives. The first one was to about 14 metres and the second to about 10 (always do the deeper dives first). It was a cloudy day and was actually storming as we were underwater for the second dive. Add that to the fact that one guy (bloody English!!) took forever equalize properly (pop your ears during the descent) and the first two dives were ok. We practiced some more skills on the bottom and tried to maintain buoyancy as we swam. The last day, though, was when we took off the kiddie gloves and saw some action. It was a perfect day for diving w/ visibilty around 20 metres. We did 2 dives to 18 metres and I saw a couple white tipped reef sharks, a sting ray, an eel, great coral and lots of ther fish. Couldn't have asked for better. Even bought the DVD of the dive to show my true tourist colors and to have a memento. The last night, the whole grouped celebrated our Open Water PADI certification, and the next morning, I was on the morning ferry back to Bangkok, where I leave for the airport in 10 bleeping minutes.
What a trip it has been. No regrets at all about the places I visited or the length of time I spent in them. In fact,I would have liked longer. But all good tihngs must come to an end. I read the message board for UL Med School, and the first post was from this guy and it was titled: "Once a Cardinal, always a Cardinal". So, I think I'll be buying numerous Powerball tix when I get back to see if I can't get out.
All right. That's it for now. I'll talk to all y'all back stateside. Thanks for all the encouragement and suppport.

James

20 meters Under the Sea Wrap up remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Operation Koh Phangan/Koh Tao

2006-07-16T15:46:46Z

Greetings from Koh Tao, from a 23 year old Kentuckian. I want to thank all those who took the time to email: Mom, Dad and Babs. Mike and Ed, I guess yours got lost in cyberspace. Grellan and Niall: a day late and a dollar short was barely acceptable.
Koh Phangan was my first stop from Bangkok, where I celebrated the big 2-3. The stomach was a bit dodgy from some bad chicken, but tanks to some Levaquin, I got over it. Foley and Burn, the two Irish lads I met up with, helped me share in a bit of craic. The next night, I caught the bus to Koh Phnagan, which is a nice island off the east coast of southern Thailand. It's very well known for its full moon celebrations, which, as the name suggests, happen every full moon. Pretty much every visitor young and old revolve their travel plans around this event, so you meet a lot of people here who you have met earlier in your travels, which can be a good or a bad thing. I booked this nice villa which is right on the beach and would be better if the ocean came in closer, but that only happens late at night when the tide is in. As for the full moon celebration, it's an all night event on the beach of Haad rin. Basically people of every nationality are present, and there are crazy fire shows, loud music and thousands of people crouding the beach. Never seen anything like it. My only wish was that the weather had been better. There was some sun in the AM, but it usually clouded over in the afternoon. All in all, it was a good place and I met good people.
Now I find myself in Koh Tao, another island about an hour ferry from Koh Phangan. Koh Tao's big attraction is its scuba diving courses. I've booked a four day course that will give me my PADI certification, which clears me to dive up to 18 metres on my own. Today was the first day, and we spent it in a room watching videos and learning about technique, breathing, signals, safety etc. All the equipment and facilites here are great, so there's no worrying about dodgy gauges or tanks or anything. Tomorrow I'l get up early and we'll go into the pool and practice being underwater with the tanks on and doing other things that will help us when we actualy go into the water the following day. The dives are supposed to be great with good visibility and nice coral and marine life, so I'm hoping for sunny days and some god times.
Hope al is well in Denver, Boston, NYC and the Ville.

Cheers,
James

Operation Koh Phangan/Koh Tao remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Lao-vely

2006-07-07T10:37:18Z

Sabaay di from Vientiane, Laos. I've been here a day and tonight I take the night train back to Bangkok, where I'll celebrate my birthday (23, if you're counting. and yes, donations are still accepted). I want to do it up in style in a four star hotel, but I'm meeting up w/ 2 lads from Galway and they're scraping nickels together at this point. So, i see a "tree" dollar guest house in my future.
Laos has been great. I took the slow boat from the Thai/Laos border down to the town of Luang Prabang. The slow boat is this long, narrow boat that's probable 70 ft long and 9 ft wide. It has cushioned seats up front (1st class), fold out wooden chairs behind them (2nd clas), then floor space (third class) and finally the engine room (steerage). Seating is on a first come/first served basis, and the first day I found myslef in 2nd class with ample leg room, sitting next to this lad from Wales. The next day, I wasnt so lucky. Got to the boat late and found myself in steerage sitting literally right behind this diesel engine with an almost deafening roar. Thankfully, this guy next to me had a spare pair of earplugs, so I was able to drown out some of the noise. After adjusting to the noise, I tried to read a bit, and then settled on sitting out the window and taking in the view. All in all, not bad. The slow boat cruised down the Mekong river at a gentle pace, and lasted two 7 hour days. We stopped at this tiny place, Pak Beng for the first night to refuel and stay the night. Overall, I really enjoyed the boat ride. They served refreshments on board, the scenery was nice: mud brown river with lush vegetation on the mountains surrounding us. Plus, we had some good craic. I met a good group of people on the boat, and I've traveled with them the rest of the way down Laos. In all, there's 2 Dutch girls, a Swedish girl, 2 Americans, and 4 English blokes.
Luang Prabang was a nice town, but not exactly what I expected from the glowing review it got in my guide book. I visited the former royal palace there, and biked around town seeing the various temples and such. LP, like Thailand and everywhere else I've been has been very humid. You sweat when you sit, and you're dripping if you have to walk long distances with a bag on you back. So, I opt for the tuk tuk (motorbike taxis) everywhere I go.
From LP, I caught a 8 hr bus (advertised as 5) to Vang Vien. The trip was longer because 1) you can't hardly believe a word anyone says and 2) the bus got a flat tire. About the dishonesty, 99.99% of people in the tourism industry lie to you. Whether it's about prices, quality, duration, amenities or whatever you gotta take it worth a grain of salt. Unfortunately, it took me a couple days to figure this out. So, if they ever made a National Lampoon's SE Asian Vacation movie, I could definitely play the part of Clark Griswald. But to my own defense, this is SE Asia. I mean Laos doesn't even have foreign ATM's, so you don't want to get assume it's gonna be like home.
Anyway, Vang Vien had nice scenery to the west, where there were large mountains that pierced the clouds. The streets and the buildings in the town, however, weren't as picturesque. A lot of rubble in the strrets and worn down buildings. VV's best attraction is the tubing, where they drop you off 6K north of town and have you float down the river, and stop at these places along the river where locals sell refreshments etc and there are rope swings along the way. I did it twice, and they were two relaxing days.
Instead of getting the bus to Vientiane some of us decided to kayak part of the way and get a tuk tuk for the second part. We were two to a kayak, and it was a nice float down the river through some grade 2 rapids. Weather wasn't the best, as a thunder storm came through. And when one of the Dutch girls asked about if anyone's died from the thunder, the guide quickly replied " no no... but from the lightning, yes". And he wasn't kidding or even fazed. So, with that, we hightailed to the end. The storm didn't last long, but when it rains here, it pours, and we were a little soggy for the journey home.
Vientiane isn't much, although it does offer the only international ATM's in the entire country. I had to bring in foreign currency and exchange it over as my ATM card doesnt work here. Laos has a crazy exchange rate (10,000 kip=1USD), so it was a bit strange walking around with a mil in my pocket, but I got used to it.
Sorry, for the delay in blogs, but I hope Ireland has been great and the lads have been firing at the sticks. Niall, congrats once again.

Cheers,
Jaimito

Lao-vely remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Oh, James talk Thai. James talk Thai real well

2006-06-25T07:10:51Z

Hello from Chang Mai, a city of 1.5 million in Northern Thailand. Chang Mai was/is a large trading post for Northern Thailand. It features a lot of Buddhist temples, which are slightly different than the ones in Bangkok due to the Burmese influence. Chang Mai is also popular because it offers treks into the Thai jungle. I opted to go on a 3 day/2 night trek, which was great. The first day started with a 1.5 hr elephant ride. Yep, I was riding elephants. How it works is they put this little bench seat that holds 2 people on top of numerous mats on top of the elephant's back. The elephants are somewhere around 25 yrs old, and then you have a Thai boy, around 15-20 sitting on the neck and guiding the elephant. The riding was fun, and I even threw out "You cheat, Docta Jones" twice, but it was a stick 'em both times as no one got the joke. As you ride around, you stop at these huts and they sell you bananas to feed your elephant. I named my elephant Babaar, and hooked him up with two bunches of bananas for giving us (there was a girl from California with me) a smooth ride. After the ride, we hiked for several hours to this waterfall, where we had a welcome dip since it was so humid.
About the humidity, it's been humid everywhere so far and you realy give your sweat glands a workout. Now, I have no problem with sweating, and I could even stand to lose a couple pounds after Oz, BUT, the level of B.O. on the tour buses and especially from the English guys on the hike is unreal. I had to stay upwind of those two blokes the entire time, otherwise I would have passed out. The cure of course would be for them to discover the brilliance of roll-on deoderant, but apparantly that phenomenon is found only among Americans.
Back to the trek. We stayed at night in these small little villages, inhabited by Thais, who speak their own language and were Christian as opposed to Buddhist. The people were very friendly, and some of them knew a little bit of English. The next day we did more hiking, swam in more waterfalls, and stayed in a different village. The scenery was very nice, as was the food, which was mainly curry and noodles. The last day, I was introduced to the Thai shower, which isn't to be confused with the Italian and Irish showers which Grellan has mastered. The Thai shower involves bringing your own soap and shampoo and using the waterfall as the showerhead. Quite nice. To finish up the trip, we did bamboo rafting. The raft was made up of about 6-8 bamboo poles tied together. There was the guide in the front with a pole, which is used to steer and speed up the raft, a girl sitting in the middle for a free ride, and then me and my pole in the back, pretending to paddle only when the guide turned around to see why we were going so slow. The trip lasted about an hour, then we were brought back into town. All in all a great experience.
So, tomorrow I head off to the Thailand/Laos border, where I will catch a slow boat into Luang Prabang. I have my visas and everything in order, and am looking forward to Laos from all the good things I've heard from travellers, especially James C.
Finally, about Bangkok. It's huge, humid, there's tons of people hustlin' trying to get you to do this and that, it's pretty dirty (they might want to at least think about garbage cans) and it's kind of smelly as well. But, with all that said, I still liked it. Wouldn't want to live there, but it's pretty convenient having all these shops, tourism agencies, food vendors etc at every turn. Oh yeah, and it's really cheap. You know you're in BKK, when the restaurant in your guest house is playing the Da Vinci Code. With that said, if anyone needs any CD's, DVD's, Adidos or anything else let me know. I fly out of BKK and can pick some things up.
Well, that's it for now.
Say hello, to everyone in Ireland.

James

Oh, James talk Thai. James talk Thai real well remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

10,000 Maniacs!!!

2006-06-18T01:41:09Z

G'day from Cairns. I'm about to say goodbye to the southern cross and welcome the northern star once again. I catch a flight to Sydney in a couple hours and then go on to Bangkok, and I should arrive at 6:30 the morning of the 19th. I'll stay in Bangkok for a couple days, then head up north into Laos, before going down to the islands off the southern coast of Thailand.
As you can guess from the title of the blog, I finally did a skydive. I did it in Mission beach, which is about 150 km south of Cairns. I finally got a break in the weather, and I made the tandem jump from 14,000 ft. I gotta say it was the best thing I've done so far. There were four people in my jump, and I was the first to jump. So, I was sitting right next to the door, which was glass so I could see us climbing higher and higher in the sky. When we finally reached 14,000 ft, the green light went on, the door opened, my guide and I slid to the edge of the door, with my legs dangling outside. I crossed my arms over my chest, leaned my head back, and the guide pushed us out of the plane and we instantly fell like a bowling ball. I think the best part are the first two seconds as you feel yourself being pulled to the ground at tremendous speed. The people who jumped after me said they got real nervous after they saw me go because you fall away so fast it seemed like I was sucked out by a vacuum. The freefall lasted about 60 seconds, and we landed on the beach, literally right in front of my hostel. So, when I landed, I unhooked from the harness, signed off to the camera (I got a DVD of the jump), crossed the street, picked up my bags and hopped on the bus to collect my DVD and head up north to Cairns. Very James Bond.
Cairns is an OK city with a pretty thriving nightlife. I met up with Valerie last night at P.J. O'Brien's to watch the rugby match between NZ and Ireland. Ireland lost a close match, but the last two tries NZ scored were a wee bit dodgy since it appeared the ball was dropped both times before crossing the touch line. Anyway, Val pointed out one of Uncle Des' former students who is now one of Ireland's best players. Legend has it, Des was short of players, saw this tall lad in the hall, asked him if he played Rugby and got him to start playing again. Then, with the proper coaching he's one of their best players. Val and I hung out til around 12, when she was catching a night bus down to Airlie beach.
The weather here continued to be overcast. I went on a daytrip to snorkel the Barrier Reef, but the visibility and colors weren't as good as they could have been. But, I hear there are excellent coral reefs in Thailand, so hopefully I will see more there.
Last night, Alessandro and I caught the USA/Italy match. Overall, a pretty crazy match, and I about broke a table when Beasley's goal was disallowed. But, the US played much better, and I was content with the draw. The best soccer story I've heard so far came from Tom, this English guy I met. He said one of his mates converts his living room into a stadium-like atmosphere for the games. There are chairs up front, and if you want a seat, you have to sit down and you have to be fully clothed. The back of the room is converted into an area reserved for the hooligans. In that area, everyone is shirtless, bangging pots together, and doing sing songs the entire game. He said there always some people who start off in the chairs, but by halftime, everyone is crammed in the back, bangin pots and making a lot of ruckus. The way he told it, just makes me laugh thinking about it.
Well, that's it for now. I'm not sure how often the blogs will keep up in SE Asia, especially Laos, but I'll try my best to keep everyone informed.
Enjoy Ireland. (Did anyone know that Grellan once shot an 87 at Lahinch??)

Cheers,
James

10,000 Maniacs!!! remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

...Not Quite the Bee's Knees

2006-06-14T23:48:43Z

G'day from Mission Beach, Australia. Weather's taken a bit of a turn for the worse as I haven't seen the sun in an entire week! Tomorrow, I depart for Cairns, my last stop in Australia. Terrible.
Right now, I'm travelling with two Italians: Marco and Alessandro. I've been travelling with Alex for a week now, and we met up w/ Marco a couple days ago. They're both real good guys, but a bit of opposites. Alex likes the fine things in life. He's the only backpacker I've met w/ a Rolex (and not the fake kind Greg gave me when he was in DC) and everything to him is broken into 2 categories: beautiful and not beautiful. Marco's more laid back. They're good company, and I've definitely been eating well since travelling with them. Last night we had a little Bruscetta and pasta. We all have our responsibilities cooking. I usually boil the water while they work on making the pasta sauce. We get along well, with the sole argument arising last night when the two Italinas were trying to decide on a wine for dinner (we compromised and bought both). I'll travel w/ them all the way to Cairns, where we'll watch the USA vs Italy game together, and maybe this time the US will actually try.
My Whitsunday trip was OK. We had had good weather up until then, but it was rainy/cloudy pretty much the entire time we were sailing. Luckily, we stayed on South Molle Island so we weren't constantly rocking on the waves, but the scenery and sailing weren't as good as they could've been. I snorkeled twice, and the water wasn't too cold, but the visibilty was poor due to clouds and wind churning up sand. I still was able to see some nice fish and coral, though. Hopefully, the weather will be better up in Cairns, and I will see more there. Also, they did allow alcohol on board the boat, so the people who chose to have a couple cocktails before the sea got rough were bending over the side saying hello to Uncle Raaalph.
From the Whitsundays, we took a bus up to Townsville and immediately caught the ferry to Magnetic Island, since Townsville isn't much. Magnetic Island was nice. It has wild koalas and wallabies (only saw the latter), and we rented a car and drove around the island seeing the sights. It was really scenic when the sun was out, but that didn't happen too often. Our hostel was great: right on the beach, with a bigscreen to watch the soccer. That's where I saw US get destroyed. The Italians cant stop laughing everytime I mention the words "US" and "soccer" in the same sentence.
Well, I'm getting the bus up to Cairns this afternoon. Just got word from Valerie that she is there as well, so it looks like we'll be able to meet up for a cheeky pint or two at the token Irish bar!
Hope everyone is doing well. When is the trip to Ireland?

Cheers,
James

...Not Quite the Bee's Knees remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

The Ant's Pants....

2006-06-07T02:09:29Z

Greetings from Airlie beach. I leave in an hour for my 3day/2night sail around the Whitsunday Islands. I had the option to either sleep in a resort on the island or on the boat, and I was tempted to pick the boat, but certain memories of people smoking out the bathroom on the Pilgrim Soul led me to choose the resort on South Molle Island. The trip should be excellent if the weather improves. Right now, it's overcast.
My Fraser Island trip was very good. My group worked out pretty well. There were 11 of us total: 7 English, 3 Irish and me. Overall, we got along well, although there was this firecracker, Danny, who would always sprint into the lakes and splash everyone and just talk real loud and constantly to the point where other groups didn't like him. The scenery on the island was great. There were lakes in the middle of nowhere, the sand was so fine it was almost like dust, and my favourite part, the champagne rocks, which is pretty much the only part of the island where you can get into the ocean (the rest has bad rips and is shark infested). The champagne rocks basically look like a thermal pool, and the water fills up the natural holes in the rocks during high tide. But, there's a barrier of rocks, so the waves hit the rocks and splash over onto you in the pool. There's also a look out at Indian head where you can see sharks/dolphins etc, but all we saw was a big stingray. From Fraser, I caught a bus up to Airlie beach.
World Cup fever is really brewing down here. Yesterday was the swedish independence day, so all the Swedes were decked out in yellow and blue and enjoying themselves and having some good craic at the token Irish bar, Paddy's Shenanigans. All the English are really looking forward to the World Cup, and I myself am really hoping the US fares well so I can cheer them on. PLus, it will really annoy the people who already dislike the US.
Lastly, I want to give a big "Tanks" to all those who contributed to the "James'23rd birthday fund", which was held a month early this year. Cheers.

James

The Ant's Pants.... remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Let's put another shrimp on the barby!

2006-05-31T09:56:20Z

Greetings from Hervey Bay, from where I leave tomorrow for a 3day/2 night self drive of Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world. There's a group of 11 of us, who drive around and camp on the beaches of the island. Luckily, there's no Canadians in my group.
Well, right now I'm sporting a great tan. It's not quite my best (my time in Chile) but it's getting there. I soaked some good rays in Byron bay. The surf wasn't very good when I was there, so I pretty much rested on the beach all day. I met some cool people there. There's 2 guys from England and Wales, who are cool, who I've done some travelling with. We've hung out since Byron in Surfer's Paradise, Brisbane, and Noosa. I've also met some new nationalities, Israeli, Italians and Belgian. The Israelis are nice but they keep to themsleves, while the Belgians were all hair gel, cologne, and burberry. The Italians, were also cool. Not nearly as loud as I thought they might be. Basically, as long as you're not Canadian, I'm fine with you. I had no problems w/ Canadians before, but now I cant stand them. If I see another one roll their eyes when I say I'm from the States, I'm gonna start defacing the flags they have sewn to their bags.
Anyway, other than sit on the beach, I went to a water park in Surfer's paradise that was pretty good, did some walks in the National Park in Noosa, and rode some quality waves, also in Noosa. Ryan, my instructor, was very impressed at how quickly I got up on my board and started carving waves. I also went to a Rugby league game in Brisbane. I only stayed one night there. It's not that good. There's no beach and nothing to do during the daytime.
I did meet an Irish lad and his girlfriend at the hostel last night. I made the mistake of asking him why Ireland didn't qualify for the World Cup. He blamed it on being in the same group as France(although the English guy said he failed to mention that Ireland tied the Swiss and Israelis at home), and then went on an obsenity laced tangent about why a coutry like Australia has no place in the cup. Then he threw in that the US has a first round ticket home. So, I think I'll leave that question out for the next Irish I meet.
Well, I need to go pack for my trip. But before I close off, who has some spare change around? I just checked my bank account and I cringed harder than Dad does when he gets the bill at Le Relais. Apparantly, I've been using the phrase "Ah...I'll do it, I'm only here once" a little too frequently.

Cheers,
James

Let's put another shrimp on the barby! remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Austrian?! Well then, G'day Mate.

2006-05-22T04:49:37Z

Greetings from Oz. Right now I'm in Byron Bay, soaking up some quality rays.
Well, I got into Sydney with no hitch. Leaving Christchurch was reminscent of travelling pre 9/11. It took all of 5 secs to walk through the security check point which may or may not have been a good thing. While in the airport, I decided to buy Henry a bottle of Jim Beam for letting me stay at his pad. Unfortunately, the bag I was carrying it in fell off the counter as I was getting my big pack searched in customs. The bag fell to the ground and the bottle landed on its cap, breaking it, and spilling whisky through my bag and on to the floor. But, the bottle was still fine, only the cap was broken, so they taped it up for me and I handed Henry a nice bottle about 1/5 full. So started my Oz experience, in true HHA fashion!
Well, Henry played the excellent host. He started it off by cooking a delicious rack of lamb and mash, breaking my streak of pasta or noodles for supper at about 20 days. The next day, he had to do some stuff because he was applying for a job, so I set off to see some of Sydney on my own. I took a bus downtown to the harbor and saw the famed opera house and bridge. The opera house is actually a creamish color, not the pearl white I expected, and a wee bit smaller, but still nice. You can actually climb the harbour bridge, the sign of a true tourist, but I just snapped some pics from afar. After a night out, Henry cooked up a mean egg and bacon brekky, on the barbie-true aussie style. He finished up his work for the interview, and we went and played this pitch and putt in Bondi. The course offered nice views and I of course took home low round. Then, that night Henry and I ventured to a footy match between the Waratahs of Syd vs. the Hurricanes of Wellington. The winner determined who would get home field advantage in the playoffs, and after a tough game, the Hurricanes won 19-14. Afterwards, we met up w/ some mates of Henry for a cheeky beer. Next day, I caught the ferry over to Manly beach. A nice long beach, that's popular among the locals. On Monday, I caught the train to Katoomba, 2 hrs west of Sydney to see the Blue Mountains. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible the first day and you couldn't see a "bloody fing" as Bod, the British guy I met up with said. It did improve the second day, and on the third day we had perfect, cloudless skies. The mountains were nice, not as nice as NZ, but it wasn't terrain I associated with OZ. So, 2 days later, I got the train back to Syd, went to the zoo, bought a bus pass on the Greyhound which takes me from Syd to Cairns, with as many stops as I like, and now I find myself in Byron Bay, which definitely has the most backpackers in it of any town I've been to. Another day or so here, and then on to Surfer's Paradise.

Austrian?! Well then, G'day Mate. remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Dunedin/Christchurch/Mt Cook

2006-05-11T00:33:47Z

Glad to hear Derby went well, retreads and all. I think I was cruising along the Otago Peninsula as Barbaro pulled away down the stretch.
I got the bus from Q'town to Dunedin, which was another lovely drive. Got into Dunedin in the evening and had an easy night in the hostel. Dunedin was founded by the Scots, who were looking to get away and set up their own religious society. It contains the only castle in NZ, and they charge a pretty penny ($20 NZD) just to get on the grounds and take a gander (didn't go). Dunedin is a fair city. Has nice town center and is easy to get around, but it's spread out and I found it to be pretty quiet. There's a big university there, but there weren't too many backpackers around. But, there are things to do. While there, I did get the opportunity to swing the sticks and fire an 87 (par 71) at the Chisholm Golf Glub, a links course that has hosted events on the Australasian PGA Tour. It was a nice course with good greens that could have been made a lot tougher if they grew the rough out. I hired a nice set of irons, Tommy Armour 845 Silver Backs, that had a good bit of knock in them. Best shot of the round was my approach to #6. Fired a 9 iron from 135 metres and staked it 8 ft, and finished it off by hitting the birdie. And trust me, you've never seen a scuffed up Top Flight XL 3000 stop like that ball did.
The next day I hired a car so I could get around the peninsula and see the albatross colony and just take in the views. It was a bit tough at first getting used to everything being on the opposite side, but I managed. 2 Japanese girls working at the hostel wanted to come along as well, so the 3 of us set off on a nice, sunny day around the Otago peninsula. We saw the albatross, with a wingspan of 3 metres but no penguins and went to the castle but refused to pay $60 between the 3 of us. As the saying goes: There is nothing free in New Zealand.
Although, we did go to, and walked up the steepest street in the world (gratis). Walking part not my idea.
Then I got a bus up to Christchurch, another big city on the east coast. Definitely the flatest and most uninteresting of all my drives. Christchurch is ok. Just another city really. Has some museums, but I was told by some brits that they're "shite" and "kips", so I saved my money and had a walk around the botanical gardens instead. With my time dwindling away, I decided to hire a car again and head off to Mt Cook and Arthur's Pass. The drive to Mt Cook was nice, but unfortunately cloudy. When I got there, low hanging clouds/fog prevented the mountains from being seen. But, the next day, it cleared up and offered great views of the area. Arthur's Pass was also nice. It's about 2 hrs west of CHCH and is the main way of crossing from east to west coast thru the Alps.
Next up up: hangin' w/ Henry in Syd.
Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Cheers,
James

Dunedin/Christchurch/Mt Cook remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Punakaiki/Franz/Queenstown

2006-05-02T02:16:40Z

Talk Derby to me! Mom, have you sent the article to the Pulitzer committee yet? As a side note I hope everyone enjoys Derby 2001, oh whoops, that was just a flashback to the last time we had just Hunter and Petrick back for Derby. The countdown til Hunter makes everyone wait while he make his grand entrance is T minus 5 days! Wish I were there!

Enough call outs. Well, from Nelson I made my way down the "wet coast". The first stop was Punakaiki, a small hamlet pretty much half way between Nelson and Franz Josef. The town itself is smaller than Kilmihil, and pretty much consists of 2 hosTELS, a pub, and a tourism office. The main attraction in Punakaiki is the Pancake rocks, so named because due to the erosion and weathering of the rocks has drawn lines in the rock, which makes them look like a stack of flapjacks. If I'm not mistaken here's how they formed: the rocks themselves are limestone and were at one time undergorund. But due to tectonic activity the limestone rose out of the ground (similar to mountain formation). Now, there was also mudrock mixed in with the limestone, and that erodes more easily than the limestone, so the lines you see in the rock are the places where the mudrock was. I believe that process is called stylohedging (mike, feel free to post your own geologic blog on what I've said, but I will say that after all the stuff I learned there and at the glaciers, I can say I minored in geology). Anyway, the west coast is truly stunning. It gets about 5 metres of rain each year, and when it rains it really pours. So, you have this thick, dense tropical vegetation covering the mountainside, which is only about 50-100 metres in from the coast. I've never seen anything where you have a nice, long beach, then only 50 metres inland from that you have the towering alps with dense, tropical vegetation. I went on a walk through the forrest, and it wasn't any different than the one we walked through in costa rica, except there aren't really any snakes or as much wild life, although I was lucky enough to see 2 kiwis. Unfortunately, it rained heavily and constantly while I was there.
From Punakaiki, I made my way to Franz Josef Glacier. There are only 3 glaciers in the world that run into tropical forrest Franz Josef, Fox, and Perrito Moreno in Argentina (been there). I did a full day hike on the glacier that included about 5 hrs on the ice. Luckily, it was a nice, sunny day, so we didn't get wet and cold on the ice. We climbed through some crev-asses, as they say, and saw some waterfalls and unusual ice formations on the glacier. On the flip side, there was an extremely annoying pack of American girls on the expedition with me that fit the streotype of annoying, loud Americans to a T. They were so loud and practically competing with each other to see who could be more annoying. So, that puts Americans in second to last place on the hierarchy of nations, just above Switzerland. There wasn't much else to do in Franz, so I headed to Queenstown.
The drive down was very nice, with terrain similar to Montana.
Queenstown is ok. Not really thrilled with it. Location wise, it is set in this great area with mountains and hills on sides. The Remarkables, just north of town are v. similar to the Tetons and a good ski place. While there are a bunch of things to do, none of them really excite me that much. I did a day trip to Milford Sound, which was great, but I think I'll take off tomorrow to see Dunedin and then Christchurch/Arthur's Pass area. Only 9 short days left.

Happy Derby,
James

Punakaiki/Franz/Queenstown remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

I See the Sea........

2006-04-26T05:30:25Z

Greetings, well a lot has happened since my last blog, so I'll have to break my happenings up into 2 blogs. Right now I'm in Franz Josef and will do a glacier walk tomorrow. Hopefully the rain will take a day off.
The only thing going faster than the time has been the money, but hey, this is what I was savin' for when I was returning nachos because they didnt have chicken on them.
Windy Welly was a nice city with a well-defined town centre that had lots of shops and pedestrian walk-ways, with some good craic at night to boot. Unfortunately, my stay there was cut short since unbeknownst to me the Rolling Stones were coming to town so all the hosTELS (as they say down here) were booked up. The Stones hadnt been here since '67, but apparantly the were still putting on a good show. But, I was able to have a cheeky beer in Welly's own Molly Malone's and see the big and free! museum, Te Papa before I had to get the ferry over to Picton in the South Island. Te Papa accepted donations (none given) had a lot of Maori things and a Lord of the Rings Exhibtion going on.
Picton greeted me with an excellent sunny day. I did a walk around the town in the morn, and in the afternoon I got on the Mail Time Taxi, which is a catamaran that sails around the coves in the Queen Charlotte Sound. Some entrepreneur got the idea to make the route of the postman into a tourist activity, so about 20 of us boarded the boat and tagged along while the mailman delivered sacks of mail, food, beer or whatever to people in the distant parts of the Sound. It was a perfect day for the cruise, and we had one stop where there was a monument commemorating where Cptn Cook stopped 5 times on his journeys through the South Pacific. As a bonus, we also came upon a big group of bottle nosed dolphins. They were very playful and they were doing jumps out of the water and racing alongside the boat with us (not too much unlike Niall and Mody racing along Eastern Parkway, but in that case it would have been just 2 dolphins)
The next day I got the bus to Nelson, which is the hub for activiites into Abel Tasman Nat'l Park. I had been wanting to do some kind of water sport and hadn't really done anything yet, so I decided to do a 2 day kayak trip around the coast of Abel Tasman that included a night's stay on the floating backpacker (a boat, which was a bit cramped but served up a good feed for brekky and dinner). While on board, I met this Topper from Minnesota. She could one up anything you brought at her. It turns out she had 5 sisters, went to this really prestigious school, was guarnateed a job after grad, danced for the Vikings etc etc. She had this really hot friend with her, which was really weird because that's hardly happened so far. Kayaking was great, though. The first day, I ended up rowing with, Tilo, a nice enough guy, who was paranoid of the kayak tipping (highly unlikely). The second day I had Gabby, another German, who was more laid back than most i've met. We saw a family of seals, and the cubs were at the playful age where they wanted to jump on the kayak and meet the people. All in all, very nice. next blog coming soon about Punakaiki and Franz Joseph.

Cheers,
James

I See the Sea........ remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Rotorua/Taupo

2006-04-16T06:17:30Z

Happy Easter!
Welcome back. Rotorua was great. My hostel, Hot Rocks, was a nice comfy 3 story hostel w/ 3 thermal pools. Only 1 was really good (the outdoors one) but they were nice to sit in at the end of the day. The first day there I went black water rafting in Waitomo, a small village 2 hrs west of Rotorua. It was definitely the most unique thing I've done so far. Black water rafting consists of floating down a river that flows through underground caves. You can repel into that cave, or enter at another site and just climb in. I was short on time, so I did the shorter version where you climb in. So I enter wearing a wet suit (river's colder than the Irish Sea), a helmet with a light on it, boots, and an inflatable donut-like raft. We climb in and turn on our lamps and walk thorugh the caves to where the water is deeper and we can actually float. We (there are roughly 12 of us) float down the river and look up at the ceiling ov the cave which varied in height from very tall to just a foot or so above our heads. There were stalagtites on the ceiling we avoided touching and for one part we formed an "eel" which is where you put your legs up on the raft in front of you and everyone floats down single file. While in eel formation, we turned off our lamps and the guides led us through while we looked up at the ceiling of the cave, which was illuminated by glow worms, which look like tiny, bright sequins on the cave roof. Glow worms look cooler than they are; they are actually maggots that have feces that glow in the dark to attract flies, which get caught in a web-like strings that they also produce. So, the whole trip lasted about 2 hours and was very good.
While in Rotorua, I also visited some geysers, went to a thermal spa-Greg, think Pucon, only my bag didn't get stolen- and did a bungy jump from 45 metres. It was pretty good. They have a photographer on the ground taking photos of you, which they try and sell you for $25. I didn't buy them, but there was one right when I jumped off and my facial expression was that of seeing a ghost.
I hitched a ride to Taupo, a city 1 hr south of Rotorua that offers plenty of extreme sports as well. Skydiving's very popular here since it's the cheapest place to do it in NZ. I had a place booked today, but weather didn't cooperate, so it was a slow day. Yesterday was great, though. I went on a fairly rigorous 17K walk through the Tongariro crossing, rated as the top day walk in NZ. It's not too tough a walk, although there are too tough climbs. You pass very close to Tongariro, the volcano used as Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies, and see some emerald green lakes and other great scenery as well. I did most of the walk with a bloke from London, whose been travelling abroad for about 8 months now, and sees no end in sight. Guy has plans to go everywhere, and he's about as happy-go-lucky as you can be. Sleeps in his car and kind of smelled, but good fun nonetheless. The town of Taupo would normally be good for some craic, but it's Easter weekend and shops and Holy Cow bars have been closed or closed early. My roommates right now are 3 Brits, a Chinese, and a Brasilian, Marcel who snores instantly when he sleeps.
Tomorrow morning I'm off to "Windy Welly", where I'll spend 2 days then bid adios to the North Island.

Cheers,
James

Rotorua/Taupo remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Kiwi Experience

2006-04-10T06:39:35Z

Everything's going great here. A quick overview as I wait for my large cheese from Domino's: Talked to Ed in the airport about NZ, and this Kiwi overheard me and gave some good local knowledge (Dunedin, watchout). He even told me about a mate of his who runs tours in the town of Rotorua, where I just arrived today. So, I'll look him up tomorrow. Flew over on a 747, which luckily wasnt the Peugot of Boeing like i feared it might be. Had nice leg room and all sorts of tv shows and movies on demand. Got in no hitch and checked striaght into my hostel. Wasnt too tired so I walked around Auck. Nice city, similar i suppose to San Fran (hilly, large asian contingent, foggy, rainy in the AM) and went to bed early and slept off the jetlag. Had another day in Auck, then I got a bus north to Paihia, in the Bay of Islands. Nice area, my tour to swim w/ dolphins got rained out, but I still did some kayaking andsome hikes. Took off this morn for 9 hr bus ride to Rotorua, which offers a lot to do. Has strong sulphur smell. which I'll add to, due to thermal springs. Also great rafting,kayaking,ferry, and volcano tours available. So, it should be a fun couple of days here.
As for the hostels, sharing the room has been no problem. I've roomed w/2 scots (great); a couple canadians (not bad); germans (also good) and one swiss (terrible). No photos just yet. Greg, I have your camera (Elf). Seems to be working well, but I dont have the transfer cables so I'll have to put photos on cd's and upload that way, which will prolly take some time. Until next time.

Cheers,
James

Kiwi Experience remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Packing Up

2006-04-02T17:06:20Z

Just two days until I head off for New Zealand. Got the tickets in hand and am ready to do this.

jboz

Packing Up remains copyright of the author jharty, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs