The Munchkin Goeth!

Greetings all!

After 6 1/2 long months, I am finally back home. It took 3 car journeys, 9 hours waiting in airports, 2 planes (11 hrs & 13 hours), and a severe lack of sleep, but I have found my way home from across the globe. I am now feeling the effects of such a long transit time (40 hrs in total), none of which are exceptionally pleasant. However, it is good to be back in the good old UK with our real chocolate, my excess of clothing (& shoes!), and my own bedroom... and I suppose it's good to see the people aswell!

I find myself avoiding reflection upon my exploits, probably because I still can't believe I'm actually back. We've been eagerly awaiting our home comforts for months now, and yet I find myself unable to properly enjoy them. It seems I am currently stuck in the limbo of transition. I haven't quite clicked out of my travelling mode and into home mode. As I've been back for less than 24hrs, I think I can be forgiven for not throwing myself in front of the TV to watch daytime television yet. Even my PS3 sits dolefully next to the TV, waiting for me to play some Oblivion or other such game.

So far today, I have done my washing, sorted through most of my clothes (keep, chuck, charity shop etc), eaten proper food (woot!), played the piano, surfed the web. Not much happening, but I'm already exhausted!

Hopefully in a few days, I will be feeling better and ready to start sorting my life out before I set off on my next big adventure.

As far as last blogs go, you may find this entry to be most disappointing. I feel I should be telling you all about how I've learnt "who I really am", "how far I can push myself", or telling you what meeting people from around the world has taught me ... but to be honest, I've got no ruddy clue what I've learnt! If anything! (I am incredibly slow-witted, so that wouldn't surprise me.)

Maybe it will take settling down into home life for me to realise the scope of what I've just accomplished, and the life lessons linked to it. Maybe I won't notice at all, and it will take some good friends to point it all out to me. Who knows?

All I know is that the world may have shrunk, but there is still a hell of a lot for me to set out and see, and I don't plan on missing out on any of it.

So for now my friends, I bid you both farewell from my blog, and greetings from the land of the living. See you all very soon!

Mount Doom is actually called Mount Ngauruhoe, situated in the Tongarino National Park. We got up at 6.30am to drive to the info centre at the national park. When we wandered in and randomly told them we wanted to go to Mt Ngauruhoe, they looked at us like we were crazy and told us we needed a guide and crampons and ice picks etc. We asked them if they had a map.

We looked at the map, found our route and set off. The Tongarino Alpine crossing is a well worn hiking route across the National park, and climbs up to the South Crater of Mt Doom. The summit is a 3 hour round trip off the path, and sadly we couldn't do it as it is currently completely covered in snow. We may be the worst hikers ever (we felt much shame as other hikers passed us with their crampons & sun cream), but sadly we're not stupid enough to attempt a steep up-hill climb to the top of an active volcano without the appropriate equipment. However, we are stupid enough to climb half-way up (i.e. to the South Crater).

The South Crater is about 1700m above sea level (or so Scruffy tells me when looking at a map with contour lines), and I think we started at about 1200m, so we got quite high. It was quite a hike. We parked the car and set off at about 9am. The first part of the hike is relatively flat with sudden bits of climbing involved. The path followed a small stream, which turned into more of a proper river to our eyes as the ice and snow covering it thawed. It was quite fun watching the water flow through the little tunnels the ice created.

After an hour, we reached our first marker: Soda Springs. This turned out to be a half-frozen waterfall with a curtain of icicles hanging down off the rock-face. We took some pictures and got our feet wet as we fell through the snow while picking our way across the flat to get there.

After taking a moment to giggle over the fact that there are loo's at the base of Mt Doom, we started the first part of our climb. It was incredibly steep, causing us to stop every few meters to stop and catch our breath or shake our protesting muscles. There was no lack of views to keep us occupied during our brief stops. We could see across the National park to a single, snowy peaked mountain in the distance, which pierced the low-hanging clouds shadowing the park. We could see the tops of the fluffy clouds as they drifted over the flat landscape we were so high.

The going was slowed even more considerably when the path became completely covered in ice and snow. We traipsed on, stopping for sandwiches and water, wishing we had thought to bring sun cream with us. As it was a glorious day with a clear blue sky and little breeze, we could feel the sun beating down on us as we climbed higher. We continually quoted Lord of the Rings, and commented many times on how we now understood why Frodo was whining so much. It's ruddy steep!

About an hour later, we reached the base of the summit and had to stop. The snow was now incredibly deep and we had reached as far as we could without professional supervision. We had reached the South Crater and that was good enough for us. We took some pictures and began our descent along the same path we had just trudged up. We did notice that the volcano was in fact smoking slightly, and came up with a plan for if it decided to erupt (further than “run!” I mean.).

We had some fun on our descent, sliding down the snow on our bums and once at the base of the South Crater (Soda Springs), we built Jeremy the snowman.

The rest of our hike back was uneventful. Once back at the car, we removed our wet shoes and socks and drove home barefoot.

And that concludes our epic journey to Mt Doom.

It's difficult to remember what my last blog entry was now, and without access to the web, I can't check. I believe I got round to telling you about our trip to the Glo-worm caves, the eve before our trip to Hobbiton.

Hobbiton was lovely. Scruffy and I set off in the morning toward the Alexander Farm (where Hobbiton is based) on Gandalf: the tour bus. When we arrived, we were shown all around the set, and told bits and pieces about the making of Hobbiton. Sadly, I cannot divulge any information or post any pictures as before the tour began, we were forced (well, asked nicely) to sign a contract saying the film company can prosecute us if we tell you anything, so shhhh!

After the tour of Hobbiton, we were quite randomly given a demonstration of sheep shearing by a wonderfully muscular Kiwi guy. The sheep seemed quite happy, and we got a little bit of wool to take home. We also got to bottle feed some greedy little lambs (they were 4 months old, but were already incredibly fluffy!).

After we had met back up with Kim, we drove down to Rotorua: the city that smells of rotten eggs. There are many hot pools dotted around the town, all heated by the natural volcanic springs. They smell of sulphur. It's terrible. We spent one night there before leaving for Taupo.

On the road to Taupo, we stopped to look at the heated mud pools. It was warm. And muddy. As expected.

We had some luxurious accommodation booked for the week, but couldn't check in until 3pm. We arrived at 11am, so we had some time to kill. We travelled back up the road to the Honey Hive – an educational yet fun place to learn about honey bees & buy New Zealand honey products. They have a glass hive you can see into. It's scary. Just a mass of bees.

Anyway, once checked in, we wiled the week away with good, nutritious food, and many rented movies. Other fun activities included walking round the shops, getting a much needed haircut, and Scruffy & myself decided to climb Mount Doom. (See next blog for that epic journey).

After our week of luxurious accommodation, we set off for Rangitukia, the most Easterly place in the world. When we arrived at the hostel, it turned out they didn't take cards, as we didn't have any cash... and there are no cash points between there and Gisbourne 130km away. In the end, we used their internet to pay them via bank transfer. There was also the added fun of cows milling about on the gravely road. It was a very rural place.

We had the place to ourselves, and spent the evening watching Firefly episodes we'd pre-downloaded on Netty the night before, and complaining about the fact that the water from the taps was untreated so we couldn't drink it without boiling it. The hostel also had a dog called Tux (which we re-named Alaska), who was apparently fond of sleeping outside the bathroom door.

Alaska also decided he was to be our guide the following morning when we got up at 6am to take the steep, uphill climb to view the sunrise. Being at the most easterly point in the world, we were possibly the first people on Earth to see the sun on 27th August 2011.

The view from the top of the hill we were sat on was beautiful. There were hills leading up to snowy mountains to our left, and the sea stretching out in front of us and to the right. We could hear the waves breaking on the beach below us, and as we were facing due East, the sun rose directly in front of us, out at sea. It began with a fault-line of glowing embers on the horizon out at sea; the few, hovering clouds tinted orange. The colours beginning as pale as the pre-dawn light, soon became bright and vivid as the sun appeared over the horizon. We watched for awhile as the sun began its ascent into the sky, before making our way back down the hill and onwards in our journey.

It was to be a very long day.

We got back to the hostel, ate breakfast, and set off on our way to Auckland. Auckland is on the West side of the island. As I already pointed out, we were on the East. We had a long way to go.

We kept switching places in the car, someone driving for a couple of hours, then sleeping it off in the back, before taking the place of navigator in the passenger seat. This carried on until 4pm, when Scruffy almost killed us... again... and Kim & I re-assumed our respective positions as city driver & navigator as we were coming in to Auckland.

I had gone through our maps and hostel lists and marked where we needed to go for 6 different hostels on the map. After much driving round, we had crossed 2 out because they were deserted and 3 were full. The lady at the last one we checked was nice enough to ring ahead for us to the other hostels at the other side of the city and found us somewhere with space enough for 3 people for 3 nights.

We got there in the end, to be told that we were being put in a 2 bed room, and another mattress would be put on the floor. Sod's Law that the last place we needed accommodation for would be the hardest to find it in.

Oh well. We're here now. We've spent today looking round the shops and spending far too much money on coffee. Tomorrow we will do much the same, just waiting for Tuesday when we will be giving back the car, and setting off on our long journey home.

Wish us luck!!

xxx

My last entry left you upon the brink of our Whale Watching tour...

We got up early on the morning of the 14th, and made our way to the Whale Watching place. This was especially difficult for Scruffy and myself, as we had been up until 1am the night before watching Gladiator as I finished another jigsaw (500 piece of 2 penguins on a pebbly beach). We pulled ourselves out of bed non-the-less and eventually found ourselves on the boat, almost flying across the ocean. This is where it got horrible for Kim.

Kim doesn't like boats. Kim gets sea sick. It was a very fast boat. Kim got sea sick. There was no actual vomiting, but lots of nausea.

Anyway, we saw 3 whales! They were sperm whales. We saw them dive. We also saw many, many, many dolphins. There were hundreds of them, all swimming by the side of the boat! We also saw Charlie, the resident seal who waved at us from the water (actually, seals have loads of capillaries in their flippers, and so they raise them out of the water to heat themselves up in the sunshine).

After we were safely back on dry land, we had fish and chips before setting off for the next boat - the ferry from Picton to Wellington. We got there early and spent about 2 hours in the car, freezing to death. Once we'd finally driven onto the ferry, we sat at a table playing cards for a while, before Kim sank into a deeper state of nausea and illness. Scruffy found a nice lady, who found Kim a duvet to wrap herself up in.

After 3 hours, we exited the ferry with Scruffy driving and myself navigating and Kim slowly recuperated in the back. We made it to our hostel easily enough and crashed out. We were exhausted!

The next morning, we wandered out into Wellington to seek breakfast. We found a cafe and I discovered that I quite like muesli, except for the dried fruit. Basically, I like yoghurt with fruit composote and oats. We decided against wandering around Wellington because it looked like it might snow. And it's a bloody good job we left! The road we needed to get up the East coast of the North island was closed, and so we took a massive detour out of our way, ending up in Napier for the evening. It was a loverly hostel - we even got free soup! We didn't realise how close we'd come to getting snowed in to Wellington until we turned on the news that night. Apparently, the East coast and South of the North Island are pretty much snowed in!

We decided the next morning to change our plans, and head over to the West side of the island to avoid the snow. So we spent a day driving the width of the island, planning on climbing Mt Doom and then heading back over to Taupo for our week of free accommodation. After spending most of the day on highway 43 - the Forgotten World highway (we don't find the fact it's forgotten hard to believe - all winding roads, sheer drops, trees & rocks in the road, and at one point a herd of sheep!), we arrived in Stratford- a little town on the edge of Egmont national park- in the dark and with Kim about to collapse from all the driving, only to discover, that in our haste to avoid the snow, we'd forgotten to check which national park Mt Doom is in. That's right, you guessed it, we were in the wrong one. We had in fact driven straight past the right one about 6 hours earlier.

We stayed the night in the coldest hostel EVER, and in the morning set off for New Plymouth, determined not to make our epic detour completely useless. We drove through New Plymouth, stopping briefly for a coffee (I can now compare New Plymouth to the old one in September you see!), before heading up to the Waitomo Glo-worm caves.

The caves were a detour, but a good one. We had a tour of the limestone caves, and were even treated to a rendition of "Summertime" by our guide to properly demonstrate the acoustics of the cave. At the end of the tour, we got in a little boat on the river in the cave, and meandered slowly through the pitch-black with only the glo-worm lights shining above us. It was quite beautiful, if not slightly eerie at the same time. It was like looking up at the night sky... but in a cave...

Our last stop today is Matamata, which has reached a kind of half-celebrity status after Hobbiton was created for the LOTR films within the boarders of the town (16km down the road). We've come here for the purpose of having a little tour of the area used for filming. That's tomorrows plan. Tonight we're staying in a motel above a pub. We only have 2 beds. Both single... We have got a heater and our own bathroom though, so to us this is near luxury (real luxury comes on Friday!!)

For now I shall have to say farewell, but I will tell you all about Hobbiton in a few days' time (we may have even found Mt Doom by then!).

Good day to you all!

xxx

Queensland → Christchurch

After our sky diving adventure, we drove down to Wanaka, stayed there one evening (spent in the hostel playing cards – the fact I immediately knew Kim was about to “punish me with Jacks” when she put an 8 down to change direction in a game of blackjack/uno was very disturbing and showed us that we reeeeally need to spend some time apart!) before moving on to Queenstown the next day.

I liked Queenstown, it was a loverly little place with a large lake. For most of our time there, we merely drank coffee and walked round the shops, on the last day however, we decided the best thing to do would be to throw ourselves into a ravine... and so we did.

The Nevis is the world's 3rd largest bungy jump at 143 meters high and is situated over a gorge. We had to go in a little cage over the ravine to get to the platform half way across. Before if was our turn, we saw a girl chicken out from jumping... twice. She waddled to the edge (the only form of movement possible in those feet-harness things) and stood there for a while, before backing off again. She repeated this once more before fully chickening out, at which point her friend jumped and lost a shoe in the process!

We saw all this from a great distance, safe on the mountainside. It was then our turn to take the little cable-car-trolley thing over to the platform. There was a transparent part of the floor so you could see just how far you were going to be falling. We were already in our harnesses, then they strapped our feet up. I was first again by sheer luck and was the first to sit in what I have named the “swively chair of pre-death”. Does exactly what it says on the tin. That's where you sit while they attach the bungy cord to your feet and waist harness'. It swivels and is next to the edge. I did not like it!!

Once you're all nice and secure, the nice men lead you over to the edge and begin a count down from 3. Now, my first bungy (in Cairns) was fine. I was breathing hard, but I had mentally prepared myself for it. This time I had not. I had just enough time to say “Wait, give me a minute! No, no, no!” before he reached 1, and it was time to jump. I'm not sure why, but the number 1 apparently has power over me... it makes me jump off of 143 meter high platforms. Either that or the guy just had a very commanding voice. Either way, I jumped. And my god what exhilaration there was! It was more epic than the first one – this time I actually jumped, rather than dived down; there was further to fall; and no one to catch you at the bottom. The rush as the ground speeds towards you, wind whipping your face, eyes watering... epic. Reminds you you're alive!

Now, on your second bounce, you're meant to pull a cord and release your feet. I pulled the cord. My feet did not release. And so, instead of being pulled up comfortably sitting in my body harness, I was pulled up by my feet. It was very disorienting and slightly scary!

Scruffy jumped like last time, but with less flapping - I think she'd given up on flying and resigned herself to falling like a common anvil in a warner bros cartoon. Kim fell gracefully to her death, but sadly was caught by the bungy and is still with us, alive and well.

After that, we got coffee and went on our way to Te Anau – South-West of Queenstown, and where we were supposed to go scuba diving. Unfortunately the company only go with groups of 4 or more, but as there were only 2 of us, we couldn't go. We spent the night instead, drinking wine and watching Juno & Calendar Girls. We also met a loverly American girl (I know, oxymoron) called Laura. I think Scruffy & I scared her a little with our blabbering.

The next day we drove all the way to Dunedin – passing though Invercargil, the most Southern city in the world, on our way. The most Southern city in the world is very boring. There is nothing there. Except a bronze statue of a geko or something or other.

Dunedin is a loverly city. It's a student town and reminds me of Sheffield with its many, many hills and it's Octagon (the centre of the city rather than a crummy building, but an octagon non-the -less). There is also a very pretty railway station and a cadbury factory. We did not go to the Cadbury factory because we've all been to the one in Birmingham, and we didn't want to learn how they make fake cadbury's.

I found a new scarf in Dunedin, and it's very pretty! White NZ wool with multicoloured silk horizontal stripes – yay! I also completed a jigsaw I found at the hostel – it reminded me of my love of jigsaw puzzles, and they let me keep it out on the table until I'd finished. Woot!

After Dunedin, we drove to Christcurch. We made some stops on the way. Our first was to a cheese factory where we bought some loverly smoked brie from Racist Cheese Man. Racist Cheese Man believed that the London riots were being caused by “those damn foreigners”, mainly the Jamaicans... Don't ask, we don't know why. But anyway, Racist Cheese Man gave us some tips as to where to stop between there and Christchurch. The first stop was a place called “Shag Point”... yeah, we know... Anyway, that was where the Fur Seals seemed to congregate, along with some penguins. We got very close to some seals napping in the grass, and Kim unleashed her inner wildlife photographer once more. My companions have apparently never seen real live seals in the wild, and so this was a new experience for them. My trips to Blakeney as a child had already gifted me with this joy, and so I was less enthusiastic about the hundreds of seals lying around on the rocks. I had a tuna sandwich and a “mother” (the NZ equivalent of Relentless – the energy drink) in the car while they fawned over the many lazy seals. We did see a baby seal though, playing with it's mother (the parental kind, not the energy drink kind) – very cute indeed.

Secondly was the Moeraki Boulders. This was a fun stop. The boulders are on the beach and completely round from being eroded by the sea. Kim & I did yoga atop one which was partially in the sea – we had to time when to run and leap on to the rock without getting our feet wet! We also found a massive piece of driftwood on the same beach, on which we did more yoga and Scruffy played monkey.

The other places were just scenic routes – but we got some nice views all the same. Mainly of the sea, as the mountains were covered by low hanging cloud.

We arrived in Christchurch gone 7pm with Kim driving and myself navigating. Due to the 1001 one way systems in place and the lack of a city centre due to the earthquake, we had to do some interesting navigating to get ourselves to the hostel. It was tense for a while, but we got there with only one major problem i.e. when the road we wanted was gone.

We're now seen what's left of the Cathedral, and Scruffy saw the outskirts of the no-go zone i.e. the entire city centre. It's a shame we couldn't see the city before the quake, as it looks like it was a beautiful place. Perhaps we shall have to return in many years time.

We leave tomorrow for Kaikoura, where we'll be spending Sunday on a boat looking for whales. Not in a Moby Dick sort of way, more of a “oooh! Look! Purdy!” kind of way. Very different.

Until next time my friends, farewell!

Xx

p.s. 2 weeks & 5 days