Neigh-buzz

Heroh.

We are currently in Melbourne, which is okay. Not loads to do, so hoping to start our east coast trip soon, when they have space on the bus. Saw Sin City last night, was wicked. Loved the way it was done. Did some shopping in the alternative-ish district today, everything's quite expensive though. I want some New Rocks (boots) of my own for once but the funky ones (with springs in them, hhhh) are about 125 squid. Then I found some funky shoes, but alas, they did not have my size. Meh.

I have also not seen Harold Bishop yet, something that leaves me melancholic.

Story-time

I was going to post a couple of photos, but realised that I haven't got the CDs on me to post from, so instead I shall regale you all with a story.
It was a hot salty day on Venice Beach in LA. Surfers were surfing, swimmers were swimming, and lifeguards were standing around looking bored.
Katie and Andy swam around in the ocean, occasionally being dunked by mammoth waves, and jumping over their smaller counterparts, when Kate decided that she'd try to jump a really big wave.
She jumped high up in the water, but the wave was higher, so in a final act of defiance she slapped the ocean with her right boob.

True story.

(The aforementioned boob may or may not have popped out)

My toilet post was much more fun :P

Kia-ora

Hi everyone!
I'm afraid it's that time again.

After Revelstoke we headed onto Kelowna, definitely a more interesting place. As Kate previously mentioned, we met up with a bachelor party and went out with them all to a few clubs (one of which was a strip club, the other just normal dancing and music). The soon-to-be-ex-bachelor, Ali, had a check-list of things he had to do that night, including licking the bottom of a girls foot and having two separate girls licking his earlobes at the same time. This check list was handily written out on the front of his t-shirt, accompanied by a mardi-gra necklace of a lady with flashing nipples.

We spent some of the last of our time in Canada on Vancouver Island, the highlight of which (for me) was a bug zoo, where I got to hold Tarantula, millipedes, Emperor Scorpions, along with a whole load of other creepy bugs :D Unfortunately we didn't get to go out to Tofino (one of the nicest places on Vancouver island) due to time restrictions.

On the 1st of September we flew out to Los Angeles.Getting through customs on the Canadian side was a bit of a nightmare, they made you fill out all of the forms and give our fingerprints before flying, but this fortunately meant that we didn't have to do anything when we got into America.We spent time exploring Santa Monica (pier, beach and downtown), seeing most of Hollywood and the walk of fame (Kate got a photo with a Michael Jackson lookalike) - the tour even took us through what is thought of as gang-land, which is actually an upper middle class estate where some shootings took place a while back, but in general was fairly safe. Beverly Hills and Bell Air were very posh with their huge mansions, but we didn't meet any stars.
We managed to get sun-burned on Venice beach, and we went to an Improv comedy night called "Mo' Betta Mondays" which was 99% black, and here was us two "cragga's" sat in practically the front row ;) We did get the piss taken out of us quite a few times, but it was all in good fun.

We flew on Tuesday 6th of September at around 23:30, all of the way through the night and arrived in Fiji before 0600 on Thursday the 8th of September - there was no Wednesday 7th September due to our crossing over the International Date Line.... freaky.
Greeting us at Nadi International Airport were a load of Fijians with their little guitars, singing us Bula songs and welcoming us "home". We couldn't check into our hostel straight away, so we left our stuff and went to explore Nadi.Fiji is a gorgeous tropical island paradise, the downside of all of that beauty is Nadi. The place thrives on tourism, which as a foreigner can be a bit daunting. The population is about 90% Polynesian, which makes the tourists stand out - easy targets for the sales-pitch that practically everyone is throwing around. Every 5 seconds we were offered cheap taxi rides (just in case we didn't want to walk a few metres down the road), and every shop assistant tried to drag us into their shop to buy their souvenirs. The place was really cheap, however, so I bought myself a nice (subtle) Fijian shirt to wear, and Kate managed to get herself a nice bikini (I'll try to get photos for you all ;) )We spent the rest of our time around the Nadi area planning our time away from Nadi.So the next morning, we boarded the Yasawa Flyer and headed over to the Yasawa Islands, a beautiful collection of tiny almost-deserted volcanic islands, covered in palm, mango and papaya trees, and holiday resorts for tourists.We stayed on Nacula Island (Nathula), about 4 hours from the mainland by high-speed catamaran. There were 4 or 5 resorts and a village, but all were sufficiently far apart that they didn't get in the way of the beauty of the island. We arrived at Nalova bay by water taxi (a speed boat), were sat down for lunch on the porch of our bure (booray), and served fruit juice and toasted tuna sandwiches while Maca (Matha) fanned us to keep away the flies.After weeks of backpacker accommodation and grubby kitchens, we were being served home-cooked food, and were allowed to relax into Fiji-time.The next few days were spent snorkelling in the coral reef that was growing right in front of the beach we were next to, sun-bathing, kayakking around the island, visiting the Fijian village and eating lots of weird and (sometimes) wonderful sea-food meals.The weather was gorgeous the entire time we were there, aside from a few warm tropical rain-showers.During our time on the island we also celebrated Kate's 23rd Birthday (Maca went ahead and cooked a birthday cake, which we had with our afternoon tea for several days), and I was stung by the local jellyfish whilst snorkelling... twice.

After a week operating at a wonderfully slower pace, we moved onto New Zealand.
On arrival at customs all of the local sniffer dogs seemed to take a liking to my backpack, which was full of books and things to do on the plane, so the dog-lady put a mark on my customs cards and sent me off through to Bio-security where they checked my hiking boots for any signs of dirty soil, and neglected to check my backpack for any contraband that I may have been carrying - somewhat of an oversight considering the dogs sniffed me out on two separate occasions. In truth, the dogs were probably set off by some Fijian Kava that I bought at the airport on the way out of Fiji.
Arriving into Auckland, it was quite grim. Spring in New Zealand is very windy and very wet. Prevailing winds blow over the islands making it seem really cold, and in my great wisdom I only had a single item of warm clothing. I had also managed to lose my raincoat somewhere in either Canada or LA, and didn't realise. Fortunately we weren't in Auckland long, and the weather soon began to improve (a little).

We began our Connections tour on the 19th of September, first impressions of the guides weren't so great, but over our 12 days with them they really grew on me. The first few days of our tour were spent on the North Island, we visited glow-worm caves, and discovered how many people you could fit in a small geo-thermally-heated splash pool (7, if one person lies across the top of everyone else). The 7 of us got quite drunk and had an excellent time breaking the ice. During this time we also got told off twice by one of the tour guides, ooops ;)The Rotorua area is a real hot-bed for geo-thermal and volcanic activity. There are approximately 16000 Earthquakes per year and a Maori village (Te whakarewarewatanga o te ope taua a Wahiao) has been built around the hot springs to take advantage of the hot water (sometimes so hot that it would strip the flesh off your bones in short order). The place stank of sulphur.
Most of the time on the tour was spent on the South Island. Aside from the beautiful scenery (Watch "Lord of the Rings", pretty much everything in that film is taken straight from New Zealand, and the New Zealanders really love to cash in on this) the island is home to Queenstown, the adventure capital of the area. Optional activities here included hang-gliding, bungy jumping, canyon swinging, skiing and the night-life.The bungy jump was fantastic. 134 metres fall from a suspended gondola into a valley, and the canyon swing was also brilliant, a 60 metre fall, and then a 200 metre arc racing past at over 150kmph... backwards ;) I have some excellent pictures and video footage of some of this, which I'll look forward to showing anyone that is afraid of heights ;)
The low-point of the entire time was the morning after a few of us had a pretty hectic night of drinking. The next day we were on the bus for hours, and I used more than my fair share of sick-bags that day - yuck.
The end of the tour was met with mixed feelings, it was sad to see everyone go, but so nice to have a bit of space and not have to travel every day. We arrived into Christchurch earlier than expected, and had one more night out with everyone on the tour to wish them all farewell.
We've been in Christchurch now for a couple of days, most of which we've spent just chilling out. I've been for a jog through the botanical gardens, and chased by a mother-duck protecting it's ugly little ducklings, and we've literally been seeing things non-stop, so it feels pleasantly like the end of this part of the trip - We now have Australia to conquer, and the flight is on Tuesday.