Stray Day 7 - Invercargill

Today started early with a 6am departure from Gunn's Camp (hope I never see that place again) and a rush to Bluff to get the guys on the 1030 ferry to Stewart Island. i would have liked to have gone over but it was too expensive and to get value you need to stay a few nights, which I do not have. We took a 'nice walk' up to Stirling Point. It was very pretty but unexpectedly steep so quite the work out. Then on to our hostel in Invercargill, Tuatura Lodge. First time on the top bunk, it feels quite precarious up here. Every tap of the keyboard makes the whole thing wobble!

I'm pretty sure the zombie apocalypse has already happened in Invercargill, but the zombies are boy racer shaped (the soundtrack to this post is roaring modified exhausts). There is nothing to do here. There is nobody here. The pub recommended in Lonely Planet doesn't open on Sundays. The streets are deserted. The girl in the supermarket was completely incompetent, I think her brain was already eaten.

There is a lovely park – so man of the towns have nice parks with flower gardens and fountains and so on – with an aviary and a little animal enclosure. There are some giant guinea pigs and even more giant wild pigs, and a stag with huge antlers, but they all looked a bit depressed and didn't do much. I had Hell pizza for dinner, had to be done at least once in the home country of Hell (more brain eaten staff though – I hope we get out in one piece).

Stray Day 2 & 3 – Franz Josef Glacier Hike (16 February) & Makarora (17 Feb)

Up early for what is most likely the most active part of the whole trip – a full day hike on the Franz Josef Glacier. This is the second largest glacier in New Zealand (I don't know if there are guided hikes on the largest, the Tasman Glacier, perhaps it's not as pretty as Franz Josef or Fox). Some of the group were doing what became known as “ze 'eli 'ike” (must be said in the Frenchest French accent you can possibly manage) which allowed them to skip the boring part and get straight on the ice – for the extra $160 it didn't seem worth it to me, not least because I am convinced that one day the universe is going to wake up and realise that helicopters simply should not work and will reboot that particular law of physics, and all the 'elis will fall out of the sky. Best to avoid being on one in case today is that day.

We walked up to the Franz Josef Glacier Guides office to get briefed and kitted out with boots, crampons and optional rain gear. I decided to take it all – overtrousers, jacket, gloves (unexpectedly, mittens) and woolly hat. The boots weigh about 17 tons, how y'all wander about on a day to day basis strapped into New Rocks is beyond me. I ended up wearing two two pairs of proper wool socks on the suggestion of one of the guides as I fell between sizes in the boots, I was so glad I discussed this predicament when people started complaining of blisters from loose boots before we even got on the ice.

A quick bus ride to the car park and we mooched out onto the valley floor where we were split up into groups between the various hot instructors. This is a common theme in New Zealand,the percentage of hot fit blokes working in pretty much everything you encounter from pubs to tours is very high. Yay is a mild expression of my feelings on that (is it any wonder I want to move here?*) I immediately chose the loser group i.e. the slowest, having negative confidence in my fitness and bravery levels. (As it turned out, group one (the fastest) went so fast they didn't have time to stop and look and take photos, so that was disappointing for some people.) Then it was a good half hour trek across the leavings of the glacier towards the terminal moraine (see, fancy words what I remember from geography, despite the best efforts of my demented teacher to ensure I knew nothing at all of the subject – she was equally successful with my French). This was made less than pleasant by the weight of the boots and jacket etc was shed as it became very warm. We stopped to put on crampons and wait our turn to go up on the ice. Standing there I commented to Lisa that there were mental people hanging off the rocks hacking at them. Turns out they were making steps for us to go up the INCREDIBLY STEEP AND FRIGHTENING face of the glacier. I felt ill.

Crampons on and triple checked, advance to the steps gingerly, both from fear and the awkwardness of walking in the crampons (unlike the guides, who were running around like mountain goats in theirs). Despite looking like rocks in the photos, these are actually ice, it just happens to be rock-covered ice. Heart in mouth I hauled myself up there watching only where the next step was and trying not to catch my hand between the rope and the wall of dirty ice it was attached to. Once up top and I recommenced breathing, there was a longish period of walking across the rocky part to get to the good ice.

And it is good. It is spectacular. I can't even describe it really, these huge waves of ice that look like they froze mid-crash to surf, the various holes and tunnels and pools looking even prettier as the sun glints off them, the views... it's really amazing. Definitely worth the money, though trying to convince people of that later in the trip was hard (bloody backpackers, come all the way here and then don't do anything cause they have no money, or spent it all on beer) because it is just something you need to experience. Maybe not for a full day, as towards the end I got a bit tired of glaciers but that was just cause I was worn out.

We walked through multiple narrow crevasses, handily helped in some places by our very nice guide setting handropes for us (most guides didn't) to help with steep bits. one of the last of which I just slid through on my ass on the wall because it was just faster (and exciting, i'm easily pleased) and also went though a very wet tunnel as a a special surprise. That was way cool. Best to just look at the photos but it won't convey the experience. You should all just go do it.

What was just MENTAL was the random man who ran past us wearing naught but tiny running shorts and crampons on his runners. There we were, sitting down taking in the view when a nearly naked insane person appeared moving at speed. Bizarre. He had a brief (since he didn't stop) conversation with our guide about times and training and so on, it seems people will run up anything these days.

Approaching the aforementioned INCREDIBLY STEEP AND FRIGHTENING steps to get back down from the ice was even more terrifying from the top. Especially as I had already nearly fallen off something by tangling my crampons due to tiredness, which is scary. I actually felt nauseous. But I got down, and we struggled through the long, long walk back to the car park. Luckily we had pre-rewarded ourselves with a trip to the hot pools near the hostel.

The hot pools were beautiful, out in the rainforest (though there is a canopy above to keep out leaves and so on. Three pools of 36, 38 and 40 degrees soothed our aches and pains. There was a strange Frenchman (aka Jesus) who wandered around declaiming from whatever book he was reading, and a (German?) couple who got a little more excited about things than they really should have (well, he got excited and she... dealt with it) which was gross, but other than that it was very relaxing and very lovely. Back to town for a nice dinner in The Landing (I had ribs, and made a mess) then to the hostel bar for laundry, drinks and chat (at the same time – multitasking, you know0 - unsurprisingly though, not a late night for many.

Next day was a long one on the bus, the only stop I recall being at Knight's Point. As became a feature of this trip, whatever animal was supposed to be there, wasn't. We overnighted in Makarora (pop. 40) in these lovely little triangular cabins. They'd be even more lovely for the voyeurs amongst you as the shower is very viewable from the back, due to unfortunate window placement. I thought this was the end of civilisation – little did I know. There was karaoke. Less said about that the better. A good night was had by all though apparently (I might not 100% remember every last bit of it, to be honest, in part due to only having a toasted sandwich for dinner – when Cougar said there was no shop i didn't really think that that meant there wasn't much food of any kind to be had. Oops).

Next stop, Queenstown.

* But I don't want to be forced into it!

Stray Day 1 - Christchurch to Franz Josef

Up at 6ish for the bus to Greymouth to join up with the Stray bus, who I am touring the South Island with. I didn't sleep fantastically well, in part because I was so terrified of missing the 7am bus!

The journey was pretty, nice views along the way as we crossed the alps via Arthur's Pass. There was some rain though, and the bus windows were very dirty so no good photos unfortunately. Landed in Greymouth just over an hour before the bus was due, so had a wander around. Greymouth is rubbish.

I felt a bit intimidated getting on the Stray bus, as it looked quite busy so they'd all know each other already. Turns out they'd partied hard the night before also, so were well bonded by this point. I sat myself next to Angela and we mooched on to Hokitika. This mainly involved going to the supermarket. As it turned out, supermarket stops would become a big feature of the bus. Since I had no intention of cooking at any point, this was less than interesting. We had a couple of photo stops to check first views of the glacier and soon we reached Franz Josef.

I'd been advised to do the full day glacier hike, and despite my trepidation I signed up and forked out 160 bucks (that was with the discount!) for the hike and a trip to the hot pools afterwards. There was some ogling of the guides who were wandering around the building, then onto the Rainforest Retreat hostel. It's fine, really doesn't have enough showers/toilets but other than that seems okay. I went for the backpacker meal in the bar and got talking to some people, 2 girls from the North who had also joined the bus that day and some of the others as the night went on. Early to bed though to be up for the glacier!

Sydney

I've never had the slightest interest in visiting Australia. It's not like I've actively taken against it (unlike Thailand, for example – last place on earth I want to go, disease torn/war zones obviously excluded), it just always elicted a response of 'meh' when mentioned. Yes, there is sun – I love sun, despite how it hates me. There are beaches – I like these in theory more than practise, sand in my birkies being a long-held aggravation. There are surf boys – hmmm, whatever. Other places have sun and sand and surf boys, like Hawaii. Hawaii might be cool. It'd probably have shopping as well. I only came to Sydney because I knew some people there and my travel agent said it didn't cost anything extra to stop off, and it broke up the flight.

{Aside – wtf is a wobegong? oh, they haven't actually called an animal a woebegone, have they? I find it hard to believe something that silly tried to eat a surfer. It is quite woeful.}

First day in Sydney involved an early dim sum breakfast with some very excitable children, followed by general mooching around being shown some key sights by the now local Sadhbh, my very gracious hostess for the few days.

The Opera House really is spectacular, I first saw it from The Rocks and the next day from Mrs. Mcqauries chair, so got both sides. I had a nice walk through the Botanic Gardens and went to the art gallery (one good Reubens self-portrait and a pretty Monet, but then all Monets are pretty aren't they? but in general a fairly dull collection other than some of the modern stuff which is interesting, two Gilbert & Georges in particular standing out – whether for the shock factor or the artistic value I'm not sure. Through the wonders of Facebook i met up with Brian for lunch and a trip to Wildlife World, where we saw many insects and an ENORMOUS crocodile. Oh and kangaroo dangly bits – they are super dangly.

In general though while I couldn't say Sydney was a disappointment given my lack of interest in it before going, I had hoped it would change my mind and impress me, but it really didn't.

The most obvious failing of Sydney is that the shopping is pathetic. Not a big deal for many, I know, but fairly critical for me; it is my major hobby after all. I didn't actually look at shoes, since I definitely do not have space for more shoes. There seems to be two types of clothes other than the usual top-end designer stuff: firstly, stuff similar to Swamp (and its ilk, you know the crappy shop in the local shopping centre, full of synthetic fabrics and poor stitching) where a top costs between 20 and 40 dollars and then Australian brands where a top costs 200 dollars. That's the guts of one hundred and fifty euro for something that sits somewhere between Oasis and Monsoon. I have been informed that the first Zara store just opened – it will clean up. Big time – Zara is an astonishing brand as it is* but it has not so much as a button of competition in Sydney. I wanted three things (as previously mentioned) none of which were difficult in a sunny summer city, or so you would think; ¾ length shorts, a t-shirt or two and a summer dress. I thought the shorts would be simple, in the actual home of Billabong and possibly Quiksilver and Rip Curl (fact check required). But no. Sigh.

* Reminds me, I saw a fascinating book in the Christchurch library about fashion branding I really must hunt down when I get home

Singapore to Sydney

After the difficulty of figuring out what terminal I was departing from, which didn't help my irrational conviction that I was in the airport on the wrong day (I've not been sure all week what day it actually is, such confusion caused in part by time zone changes and in part by heading up from Cork on Monday rather than Sunday, an event that always throws my mental positioning in the calendar out of balance), and failing to find food, the flight itself was dull. We were delayed as two passengers failed to board, so their luggage had to be removed. I fear it was the unfortunate lady ahead of me at check-in and her husband, she left her handbag in the taxi. Hopefully she got it back, Singaporean honesty and morals would suggest she did, or will.

I watched District 9 – what a galactically upsetting movie. Seriously. I was traumatised. There was no way I was touching The Hurt Locker after that. Food was worse than the LHR-SIN leg, service was equally disinterested. Qantas – not my favourite airline. I should have known, I've seen the crew on off-days in Singapore, it's not surprising that they're not in the best of moods on the plane. My travel agent has somehow managed to stick me near the crying babies twice so far – I need to do seat checks for the flights in and out of South America to make sure I am not near any bulkheads. 20 hours of screaming infants is the opposite of fun. If this trip turns out to be exceptionally successful and I marry a Kiwi, my theoretical husband can take any theoretical kids to visit their theoretical grandparents by himself if he so wishes. I won't be holding my breath on the realisation of such a theoretical scenario however.

On landing, I thought we had taken a wrong turn and I was back home (this might not have been entirely unwelcome) as it is RAINING. In AUSTRALIA. Ok so I'd been warned such a thing was possible but it is summer and did I mention AUSTRALIA? It never rained in Home and Away* except when there was a requirement for a storm of epic, cast clearout proportions. Getting out of the airport and into the rain took about an hour – they do take their immigration seriously here. Which is hard to take seriously when the dude on the counter is called Pascal and is a Nordie. Anyway, queued for a million years, in some kind of random arrangement occasionally disrupted by an angry older lady who only got angrier when people failed to understand the directions she was clearly giving telepathically as she didn't actually speak them. Then they scanned my bags on the way out! OUT! Main target here seems to have been food, as one woman was arguing quite vociferously over a cured ham (iberico? serrano? I couldn't tell from where I was) while the rest of the biological crims looked sheepish about their various sandwiches and other food items. My crème egg survived.

Time to see if I've been horribly wrong about Australia.

* You know H&A is a fundamental part of the fabric of Irish society when you're trying to explain something (obviously crucial) about Emmerdale and you can see the lightbulb ping, “so Hotton is like the Yabbey Creek of Emmerdale!” and clearly it is understood that this relationships bears true in both relative size and location terms but more importantly in 'bad influence' terms.

Singapore part 2 - Shopping, or the lack thereof

Singapore ended up being a total clothes fail scenario. Even Forever 21 let me down. I'm not sure why I am surprised at such a turn of events, I've been to the US 6 times and only crossed it's portal once that I am aware of, considering it not do much beneath me but the kind of cheap trash (the closest parallel I can think of is New Look) I can get at home. Of course such places always have the odd gem, but it's never seemed worth bringing home (as part of my 40+kgs, ah those were the days).

However, one of the make up bloggers I read & watch (lollipop26, who became netfamous on youtube but also has a blog) is a big fan, and i started going in there when I saw it in Singapore. I think I only got one item, it is a gem though. But really this venture is pointless as the blogger is a completely different shape, coloring, everything to me, so what suits her does not suit me. for example, racer back vests. And teal. Sigh. This time I was convinced Forever 21 would be the place to sort me out for a nice semi-cazh top and maybe a vest, but no. Nothing.

So all I have to show for my trip is a refill for my eyebrow-drawer-inner (ah pants, I forgot to get my eyebrows done), a lipgloss, a concealer brush from Sephora (seriously, why do we not have Sephora in the British Isles? No, Boots is not the same) a Kipling bag (I've always hated the bag I brought – a crossbody style purchased for practicality not looks, it's the fallback for when I'm stuck for a gig or match but the strap irritates my neck, and it was a bit too small for this trip as it only fits very small books. And it is fug.) which is quite nice but was a hundred bucks (!!! I need to speak to *someone* about how they fund their Kipling addiction). Oh and apparently about 4kg of books. Scales at Changi came in at 16.9kg, though they did then go to a more reasonable 15.3 when she moved the belt, so possibly I only got 2.4 kilos of books. Ahem. Well, the first shop had buy 2 get 155 off the total, and the second had everything for 6 dollars so it seemed foolish to not buy any. What if I was trapped bookless somewhere? Since I've already read 3 of them, it seems that such a scenario is still possible.

Onwards to Oz.

Stop 1 - Singapore

Apologies in advance for terrible dullness of this post.

I've taken more stuff on a week to the Canaries. My bag was 12.9kg. I was comfortable in the amount of space left in the bag would allow for a little shopping in the first few stops – I want some ¾ length shorts, for example – but on landing in Singapore and stuffing mmy hoodie in I realised this might not be entirely possible. Hmmm. I'd freeze on the flights without it though, and potentially on the Sth American bus trips (people really rack up the aircon on these things).

The flight was pretty uneventful. I bussed to the airport – about 22minutes from O'Connell St to the airport on the Airlink. I picked up a couple of necessary items (moisturiser, protective case for the netbook which was reduced – apparently Peats are taking over the electronics sales area so they're trying to get rid of stock. Given Peats high street pricing, I think this is a bad idea for airport sales figures.

(Aside courtesy of CNN– does the opening bell in Wall St get a big clap every morning? Weird.)

Transfer in Heathrow was fairly straightforward, though it was weird when I went t flight connections and security directed me to go the public route to T3 rather than through connections, as the connections route had 2 security checks instead of 1! Bizarre, since connecting travellers have already been through security. T3 was absolutely jammed, it is not a comfortable space. Food options were limited so picked up a bagel and Heat. I miss Heat already. What I cannot understand about UK airports is the inability to announce your gate until it's almost boarding time, especially since all the gates are miles away from the general holding area.

Anyway, Qantas food is slightly better than Air France, I slept a lot of the time, though did manage to watch some lame movies (good movies require too much concentration).

First night in Singapore was in an airport hotel – it was the only decent place I could afford. Everything else, while technically not being brothels, all seemed to rent rooms by the hour and involve showering over the toilet, If I'd tried that the first night I'd be home already. I've been told there are other options, but since I'm travelling solo it's a little more difficult to find affordable places. It's a perfectly nice hotel and had a lovely bathroom but really it was in the middle of nowhere. As I woke at 5am I mooched out to a local mall in the morning, didn't see anything interesting. I changed to the Stamford this morning and have a lovely room on the 63nd floor. Fabulous view.

I spent a lot of the day wandering around Orchard, picked up a couple of small items. The weather was wet so I came back to the hotel with the intention of going to vivo city, but i sat down for ten minutes and woke up three hours later. Sigh. What a fail. It is a bit torturous being here though – hundreds of shops and I can't buy the shoes and bags and dresses I've seen as they are a bit too fancy for the whole backpacking trip. Getting back into the heat is amazing. Instantly I felt better. Ok, it's pretty humid, but it's HOT. Yay for hot. A bit of sunshine would be nicer than the rain though.

What I have bought is books. I've already read two and am debating ditching them – I might wait until I get to Christchurch though and see if I can find a book swap or at least dump them in a hostel where someone else might read them.

It was a good idea to start off somewhere familiar though. It's not so daunting at the moment. We'll see when I get to NZ.

Crisis the First

Oh how I laughed at my near-miss on a crisis by almost leaving my ipod in Cork. I had forgotten to take down the connector, so hadn't reworked the contents as planned but was willing to live with the 20% of junk in the face of the 80% of awesome.

Right now, I have 100% of zero. Not realising there was a music manager that would autoplay the ipod, and even if it did that this would wreak havoc, I plugged in the iPod to the eee and watched it destroy all before it. Except that crappy version of bejewelled I'm still bitter aboout paying 5 euro for. Further investigation shows everything is still there, the software just saw fit to reorganise the folders in a way the iPod does not understand. Sadness. Actual tears. A veritable tragedy in my life. My life which for the next 3 months contains multiple 8+ hours flights and many many 5+ hour bus trips, and hostels where I'll need to drown out my dormmates. You can see the quality of my tragedy*, the terror I am facing. I have zero tolerance for other people's noise, and they'll all have crappy ipod headphones leaking at me in a vicious, deliberate fashion.

Obviously I rang Liam and cried 'save me!!'. No seriously. Ok I ranted first and then cried 'save me!!!' let us hope he can, despite the lack of quality pop tunes on his laptop (he has a complete failure to comprehend the artistry behind Girls Aloud). Give me some Arctic Monkeys and the Charlatans Greatest hits, and I'll be happy. Give me a working iPod with anything except dance music, Muse**, comedy music or country and irish (now that is the music of suicide, not the music of pain) and I'll live.

Fingers crossed people. Or there's likely to be blood on the streets.


* Yes, it's not very tragic in the grand scheme of the world.
** Except that one song that I bought, but that was a disappointment too. And a cover. Oh I admit it, I still feel dirty.

Additional learning experience - need to find a photo editor, stat. Camera only takes pictures in size enormous. Photo Manager doesn't do much detailed managing. Where's Paint when you need it?